Angela Carter (1991) Wise Children.

‘Good morning! Let me introduce myself. My name is Dora Chance. Welcome to the wrong side of the tracks.’

Carter specialises in the wrong side of the track. If it’s not circuses, it’s showbiz, which is just a different kind of circus. Dora has taken on the task of writing her autobiography. Well, not just hers, but her twin sister, Nora. It’s their seventy-fifth birthday. Same birthday as William Shakespeare (assuming we know who that is). Same birthday as their father, the well-known national treasure and Shakespearian actor, Sir Melchior Hazard, who is a hundred. Everybody will be there, including his three wives and their daughters.  

Nora and Dora are the bastards of the family. ‘Grandma’ Chance is one of those women that pops up in Carter’s books. Landladies, or brothel keepers, that specialise in eccentricity and taking in stray waifs. Hearts of gold, but nobody’s mug. Grandma Chance tells them that her mum helped in the boarding house. It specialised in actors and Melchior Hazard was too big a pull for their mum to resist. Pretty Kitty died during childbirth. Melchior moved on sharpish and never acknowledged the twins as his.

Melchior’s fraternal twin brother, Peregrine, loved the girls as his own. He loved the Chance girls as his own. He also loved the Hazard girls, Saskia and Imogen, as his own (ahem). The media dubbed their mother Lady Atlanta Hazard as the most beautiful girl in England.

It’s a big family, with the Chance girls taking their chance to be with their famous father whenever they can. The poor relations begin working in song and dance before they leave school. Stage is their home. They’re naturals, naturally. ‘We were doomed to sing and dance.’

And they work their way through the First World War and they hit their more successful streak in their teenage years and travel to Hollywood before the Second World War kicks off. They have a part in A Midsummers Night’s Dream. (If you’ve never seen it or read the play, you’re lucky—I’m not a Shakespeare fan.)

Melchior, like his father before him, worships Shakespeare. His big budget production stars Delia Delaney, also called Daisy Duck. She’s tiny, but beautiful. It had me thinking of Dolly Parton. The camera loves her. Everybody loves her, and she loves everybody right back. She doesn’t give a hoot or quack. When she falls for Melchior, she’s quick to dump her lover Peregrine and her husband, ‘Genghis Khan’. He who was paying for everything she loved and expected fealty. Think Harvey Weinstein buying and selling little starlets, a dime a dozen.

Carter’s success is her characterisation. ‘Details,’ Dora tells her imaginary reader, if you give a little depth and get it right, readers will ‘believe anything.’ Carter can do no wrong. We believe anything of her. Wise Children is wonderful. Read on.       

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