Wise Children - Angela Carter

Wise Children By Angela Carter Angela Carter’s Wise Children is the life story of show businesses Chance Sisters. Dora Chance, twin sister of Nora, narrates throughout the story. She tells their colourful life tale upon the commencement of the twin’s seventy- fifth birthdays. The story is set mainly in England. The twins spend a great deal of their lives based at their childhood home in Brixton, South London. I think Angela Chance has chosen this setting to exaggerate and highlight the twin’s illegitimacy. The North and South divide of social London were very clear at the time of the books setting. The “Right side of the tracks is the North ...  Read the complete review

Wise Children, like all Angela Carter's novels, is very, very, very hard to quantify. The novel itself is a minefield of clichés, stock characters and contrived situations waiting to happen. My point being: this never happens. Ever. Not at all. This does not seem possible. Contextualisation: knowing the name and not much else I picked up the novel second hand, having read the first few pages in the shop. I was enjoying it but there was the niggling thought in the back of my mind: this book could get annoying. But I knew it would take 30 or forty pages to find out and so what was there to lose. What indeed? I bought it. Wise ...  Read the complete review