Wise Children (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Angela Carter
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1888 to the 1990’s
- Setting: London and Hollywood
- Principal Characters: Dora Chance, Nora Chance, Tiffany, Sir Melchior Hazard, Peregrine Hazard, Wheelchair (Lady Atlanta Hazard or The Lady A.), Delia Delaney, Saskia Hazard, Imogen Hazard, Grandma Chance
- Genres: Long fiction, Magical Realism
- Subjects: Parents and children, Reality, Fathers, Illegitimacy, London, Hallucinations or illusions, Hollywood, Songs or songwriters, Twins or multiple-birth siblings, Shakespeare, William, or Shakespearean plays
- Locales: London, England, Hollywood, CA
The last in a line of wildly inventive novels associated by many critics with postmodernism and magic realism, Wise Children, published just before the author’s death from cancer, is in many respects Angela Carter’s gentlest and most conciliatory work. Written as the first-person memoir of seventy-five-year-old Dora Chance, the introspective half of a twin sister song and dance team, The Lucky Chances, the novel re-creates five crucial periods in the sisters’ lives, each of which centers on an encounter between the twins and their natural father, Sir Melchior Hazard, the...
[The entire page is 1869 words long]
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