Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #307716 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-10
• Released on: 2007-12-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780374530945
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Carter, who died this year, delivers comic writing of the highest order in this giddy tale of a highly eccentric British theatrical family.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
On their 75th birthday, we meet Dora and Nora Chance, former dancers and illegitimate twin daughters of one of Britain's leading theatrical actors. They relate their colorful and amusing family history as the novel unfolds, describing their often strained relations with the legitimate branch of the family. Carter writes in a dry, comic, British style reminiscent of Fay Weldon. There is a good deal of theater chatter and a raucous Hollywood tour the girls undertake with father Melchior and his twin, Uncle Peregrine. Still, while there is much imaginative fun, the insider humor may be too parochial for American tastes. Libraries can probably skip this one.
- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A bawdy tale of parenthood told by a typical Carter (Saints and Sinners, 1986) heroine: witty, brash, and a sucker for farce who gives a story a good feminist spin. The septuagenarian Chance sisters, identical twins Dora and Nora, may like all wise children know their father, though the paternity has never been acknowledged, but they also learn here that after all these years they can't be too certain about their mother. Already busy on her memoirs, Dora begins her tale--told with all the innuendos and humor of the vaudeville comedians she once knew--on the day the sisters are invited to attend the hundredth birthday celebration of their father, the great Shakespearean actor Sir Melchior Hazard. The family bloodlines, Dora tells, were never all that clear: it has long been believed that a young lead--rather than aging grandfather Hazard, married to a much younger actress--was the real father of Sir Melchior and his twin, the lovable and rich Perry. It's also been believed that the eponymously named Chance sisters were the result of a liaison between their father and a young woman who died conveniently at their birth. Raised by the mysterious Mrs. Chance, the beloved ``Granny,'' the talented twins were soon dancing and acting in variety shows, having affairs with the great and not-so-great and- -the climax of their careers--making a movie in Hollywood, where Dora had an affair with a writer, whose resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald is quite intended. In between, Uncle Perry came bearing gifts; they met their father's three wives, and watched from the sidelines the goings-on of their half-siblings, whose own paternity is not all that clear either. An amusing romp through theatrical history that tries to answer but doesn't quite--the jokiness is ultimately too much and out of place--a serious question: What defines the true parent- -blood or the actual rearing? Accessible but thin. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Jump on board for a rocket ride through the 20th Century wit
Jump on board for a rocket ride through the 20th Century with the Chance sisters as your conductors. Stopping at Brixton, Brighton, New York, Hollywood and all places in London, Carter captures the zeitgeist of the years, as she weaves her tale 'with a carillion of laughter and a kerchief of tears'. The story of twin sisters, destined to the 'jam down' side of life, two feisty chorus girls who seize the day, and the night too; Wise Children is a celebration of wrong-sidedness (the Thames river, the bedclothes, showbusiness - the Chance sisters are always on the bastard side) and the fine line between respectability and flash.

Carter's prose is alive and vibrant, as characters step from the page, well-defined and often with an excellent sense of comic timing - this is a prose that begs many readings.

A comic novel that is actually funny; a future masterpiece of English literature; an exquisitly written romp of shakesperian proportions: Wise Children is a millenial novel that should be read by generations of fans.

Hilarious, Dramatic, Different
Wise Children is a funny yet touching tale of the lives of a theatrical family. Narrated by one of the Chance twins, Dora, it charts the ups-and-downs of the twins' lives, as well as encounters with both loved and hated relatives; with almost every member of the vast family a theatrical performer.

I've read quite a few Angela Carter books, and (while Wise Children is still written in that unmistakable Carter style) it seems far more light-hearted than, for example: Love or The Magic Toyshop, and has a completely different vocabulary, as Carter adopts the voice of Dora Chance -- deliciously witty, with a strong feminist tone, relatively simple vocab, and an entirely unrelenting appetite for drama.
I was a little dubious about reading Wise Children, as the blurb implied a knowledge of Shakepeare would be beneficial when it came to understanding the book, and that the multiple sets of twins and family secrets would become highly confusing. While any subtle Shakepeare references (aside from the obvious) went right over my head, it seems that they played a minor part in the book, as it's full of raucous wit, bubbling personality, theatrical dramatics, and an inexhaustable thirst for life. As for the numerous characters and their relation to each other: Carter manages to evoke such a vivid picture and to bestow each character with such simplistic, unique features, that you become invovled in the Hazard/Chance story (therby avoiding any confusion.)
While the ending to this book seemed a little too good to be true, it fitted in with the unrealistic aspect of the book, and the dramatic nature of nearly every major character.

A great read (as with almost every Angela Carter book) I highly recommend Wise Children.

Make no mistake, this is Carter's piece de resistance
Angela Carter's last novel,"Wise Children", may well have been the crowning glory to her illustrious career as a fiction writer. It's a coup de grace and her piece de resistance. You don't need to be an afficionado of Shakespeare to appreciate the dazzling humour of Carter's story and celebration of "wrong-side-of-the-trackness" in a theatrical family of multigenerational twins (the Hazards) or thrill to their cross-Atlantic adventures but it'll surely heighten your sense of pleasure if you're familiar with the Bard's comic characters and able to pick them out from among the novel's fabulously diverse and colourful personalities. The novel starts on a promising note and quickly settles into a swinging groove, which Carter skillfully sustains with a momentum that just builds and builds, constantly hitting new highs just when you think it can't get any better. A diabolically clever mix of pathos and humour maintains the balance between realism and a sense of the ridiculous which is unmistakeably Carter. Her legendary tongue twisting, mind bending, linguistic pyrotechnics is in full flower and display throughout. She's in top form and those familiar with the Bard's "King Lear", "Winter's Tale" and "Tempest", among others, will delight in the resonance that the novel's many references evoke. The denouement is also a masterful sleight of hand that is distinctively Carter. "Wise Children" is quite the most fascinating and entertaining novel I have read and enjoyed all year. I finished the book with such a good feeling it carried me for days. This is an "absolute must" for those who love contemporary literature of the finest quality. Don't miss it !