View source for Nights at the Circus

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''[[Nights at the Circus]]'' is a 1984 novel by English author [[Angela Carter]]. A [[Picaresque]], it starts with roving American reporter Jack Walser interviewing aerialist Sophie [[Punny Name|Fevvers]] in Victorian London on her amazing (if hard to credit) life story. Left on the doorstep of a brothel, Sophie sprouted wings when she hit puberty. Both because of this unusual feature and because she's a woman, there are many who would exploit her.

The rest of the novel follows the crew of a circus that has employed Sophie as an aerialist, and that Jack covers while working undercover as a clown. Further peril and no small amount of personal change await in Tsarist Russia and Siberia.

{{tropelist}}
* [[Big Beautiful Woman]]: You might expect a flying woman to be small and sylphlike. In this case, you'd be wrong.
* [[Circus of Fear]]: Not exactly evil, but certainly dangerous.
* [[Eagle Land]]: Jack is a likeable but in some ways painfully naive archetype of the American abroad.
* [[Everything's Better with Monkeys]]
* [[Functional Magic]]
* [[Hooker with a Heart of Gold]]: Sophie's adoptive mother Lizzie
* [[Magic Realism]]
* [[Winged Humanoid]]: Well, yeah.

{{Needs More Tropes}}

{{reflist}}
[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]
[[Category:Nights at the Circus]]
[[Category:Literature]]