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Original Title:	Wise Children
ISBN:	014017530X (ISBN13: 9780140175301)
Edition Language:	English

Wise Children

Angela Carter

Paperback | Pages: 240 pages

Rating: 3.94 | 7206 Users | 607 Reviews

Details Of Books Wise Children

Title	:	Wise Children
Author	:	Angela Carter
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 240 pages
Published	:	January 1st 1993 by Penguin (first published June 13th 1991)
Categories	:	Fiction. Magical Realism. Historical. Historical Fiction. European Literature. British Literature

Explanation As Books Wise Children

Well, sheeet (that's the way the British say the Americans say it). Back to the library. This has to be one of the most slowest moving vaguely interesting books I've ever read. Or not read. I'm on page 80 after about two weeks of intermittent baths. This is the written version of an oral history told by a seventy-five year-old bastard ex-chorus girl (usually on the left line) about her family and her famous actor father who wouldn't acknowledge her or her twin sister. As far as I can tell, there is no actual plot. We're just sitting in her house with her twin sister and their not-quite Step-mother, Wheelchair (a nick-name, clearly) and reminiscing on her birthday, the eve of an invitation to a party at her father's house. Oh, and at some point their half-brother comes in to say his lover, their adopted-ish daughter, has gone missing, which gives us a whole new branch of the family to tangent on. Don't get me wrong; the prose is interesting but dense; it's quite florid, with a few Britishisms and anachronisms to tangle me up. But it's also been charmingly pointless. Not that I object. If I met this woman at work, I'd totally stop into her room and listen to her... if I had time. But otherwise, I'd be edging one foot towards the door. There are loads of Shakespeare references--and I suspect the whole thing is supposed to be just a bit of a Shakespeare farce--especially as their dad and grandparents are famous actors in their time. And, of course, the sisters are twins, which Shakespeare never could resist, either. The language is ribald, with loads about drunken-but-loving Grandma and knickers and the old knobby bits. Kind of amusing--I guess--but mostly just exhausting. Here's the beginning of Chapter Two (there are five chapters in the book): "One, two, three, hop! See me dance the polka. Once upon a time, there was an old woman in splitting black satin pounding away at an upright piano in a room over a haberdasher's shop in Clapham High Street and her daughter in a pink tutu and wrinkled tights slapped at your ankles with a cane if you didn't pick up your feet high enough. Once a week, every Saturday morning, Grandma Chance would wash us, brush us and do up our hair in sausage curls. We had long, brown stockings strung up to our liberty bodices by suspenders. Grandma Chance would take firm hold of one hand of each of us, then--ho! for the dancing class; off we'd trot to catch the tram. We always took the tram from Brixton to Clapham High Street. The stately progress of the tram, occupying by right of bulk and majesty the centre of the road, not veering to the left n or right upon its way but sometimes swaying every now and then with a sickening lurch, like Grandma, coming home from the pub. One, two, three, hop."

Rating Of Books Wise Children

Ratings: 3.94 From 7206 Users | 607 Reviews

Evaluation Of Books Wise Children

sisters/mothers/grandmas + loss/memory + living in a house filled with dust motes & cobwebs. beyond all the Shakespearean stuff, i felt so much of this book + there were so many special moments. there is a grand old house in which the twin sisters live in that reminded me so much of the movie gray gardens - little edie! empty cat food cans, the old smell of mothballs, piles of the past. "...a bowl full of potpourri on a worm-eaten oak chest in the hall gave out a smell of old ladies and

A hilarious tour-de-force spanning a century of the history of theatre and a family's life, told in a remarkably convincing voice. I could have done without the bonus incest; it didn't seem to serve any point.

This is a gloriously ribald carnivalesque adventure, with deeper themes. It is the life story of identical twin musical hall performers, Dora and (Leo)Nora and their complex family, as remembered by Dora on their 75th birthday. Dora is a wonderful raconteur, though hardly a reliable narrator. She's more of a chatty old biddy, rambling away, enthusiastically, and suddenly remembering little asides. She would be great fun to meet, and I really felt I did.There are many twins in the story:

Oh, icky, icky, icky. I literally fell asleep trying to read this. I cannot think of a more uninspiring narrator; she even made an anecdote about jism boring. The characters drink gin, dress up like old-timey movie stars, and have a scandalous story to tell about their births (twins). All of that adds up to a nap. How can one ever possibly make gin uninteresting, you ask? I'm not sure because I drank enough of it reading this crap to forget it all. But I trust my prior assessment.

I read my first Angela Carter novel last year, The Magic Toyshop, reviewed here http://www.lovelytreez.com/?p=50 and it was such an enjoyable reading experience I fully intended to read Wise Children soon afterwards...well, better late than never and what a wondrous ride it was.Wise Children is narrated by Dora Chance, twin sister to Nora and illegitimate daughter of Melchior Hazard, the renowned Shakespearean actor. It's the twins' 75th birthday and Dora takes this opportunity to recount the

Took awhile to get into the writing style which was expectedand then it just clicked and flowed beautifully. Alot of it is kinda a flashback/history of the Chance twins and it's interesting, it's funny and there's alot of casual incest and illegitimacy of children. The story is probably it's weakest part but it does enough. The characters and the classic Carter banter is really what makes this (her last novel) so good.

What a joy it is to dance and sing! Twins Nora and Dora Chance turn 75 today; their father, Shakespearean actor Melchior Hazard, who has never publicly acknowledged them because they were born out of wedlock to a servant girl who died in childbirth, turns 100. At the last minute an invitation to his birthday party arrives, and between this point and the party Dora fills us in on the sisters knotty family history. Their father is also a twin (though fraternal); his brother Peregrine was more of a