In Nights at the Circus Angela Carter creates a raunchy, raucous Cockney voice for her heroine Fevvers, and takes us back to the turn of the nineteenth century.
Fevvers is a six-foot-two trapeze artist who claims to have hatched from an egg and grown wings on reaching puberty. Part One of the book takes the form of an interview Fevvers gives to the American journalist Jack Walser, who subsequently joins the troupe – Colonel Kearney’s Circus – out of love and curiosity; from there, the book moves into travels across Europe, St Petersburg and Siberia.