Wise Children by Angela Carter
Posted in Other fiction, Reading Reviewed at 12:00 on 12 July 2026
Vintage, 1992, 236 p.
I suspect that Carter actually enjoyed writing this book, which fizzes with energy and sly humour and at times tips into magical realism. Its title is based on the old saw that a wise child knows its father. Narrated by Dora, one of the twin sister dance act known as the Chance Girls. She and twin (Leo)Nora are daughters, on the wrong side of the blanket, of theatrical great Melchior Hazard, who unfortunately did not acknowledge them as his. That burden was taken on, though, by his nomadic brother Peregrine.
The convoluted nature of the family relationships here – the girls were brought up by the woman they know as Grandma (even though she wasn’t) and told their mother died shortly after their birth in Grandma’s house – is further complicated by the fact that living with them is the disabled former wife of Melchior, Lady (in her own right) Atalanta Hazard, known to the now 75 year-old twins as Wheelchair.
There is a measure of smoke and mirrors to proceedings, reflecting theatrical illusion. The novel is steeped in theatrical and stage lore, with Shakespearian references abounding. A trip to Hollywood illustrates the excess of the early film industry with a climactic scene perhaps owing a little something to slapstick comedy. The contrast between Melchior’s status as a grand old man of legitimate theatre and the lower brow nature of the sisters’ dance career highlights the disparity between their own legal status and that of their half-sisters, acknowledged by Melchior, born in wedlock, though possibly not sired by him.
At its core, though, is Dora’s longing to belong, her search for a figure to fill in for the father who disowned her.
Dora’s vice may be irritating to some what with all the theatrical allusions, irreverent asides and references to lost cultural staples.
But along the way she has some more serious thoughts. “Let’s not call it a tragedy. A broken heart is never a tragedy. Only untimely death is a tragedy. And war.”
Much later we have this exchange with her sister.
“‘It’s every woman’s tragedy,’ said Nora, ‘that, after a certain age, she looks like a female impersonator.’”
‘What’s every man’s tragedy, then?’ I wanted to know.
‘That he doesn’t, Oscar,’ she said.”
She also tells us that, in story telling, “If you get little details right, people will believe anything,” (true in life as well perhaps?) and vouchsafes that, “Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.”
This was Carter’s last novel, written after her diagnosis of lung cancer. In the circumstances it is something to be wondered at that, while touching on seriousness, overall it has such a consistent lightness of tone.
Pedant’s corner:- “she’s showed her all” (intended I’ve no doubt – the book’s background is show business after all – but it ought to be ‘shown’,) “to whit” (it’s ‘to wit’,) forbad (forbade,) “Nora said, he was young enough” (that comma alters the sense,) “Epps’ cocoa” (was that a proprietary brand. Whatever it ought to be ‘Epps’s’,) a musical revue called What You Will, later rendered variously as “What? You Will?”, “What! You Will?”, “What! You Will!” and “What You Will!”, “than sang” (then sang,) “oblivious of” (it’s oblivious to,) “legs akimbo” (how you can put your feet on your hips is beyond me,) slax (slacks, spelled so to indicate lack of care or attention,) “never forgave a grudge” (a malapropism for forgot?) “Peter Jones’ store” (Jones’s.) “Nora sunk in thought” (sank.)
