Nights at the Circus was the [livejournal.com profile] bibliogoth book for October and on the whole it was met with some rather negative reviews, most people hadn’t finished it. On the whole I didn’t really like it all that much. I don’t really like books about circuses, there are only 2 exceptions Geek Love and the Caligari Carnival. I found the style did not appeal to me. It was a book where a lot was happening; I just didn’t care enough about the characters to make it worth it. It was oddly feminist, there were MANY references to penises, there were lots of ex-prostitutes, and the women all had back-stories explaining who they were, and none of the men did. It felt rather disjointed and uneven, but it did get better the more I read. There were some quite nice bits; I particularly liked the women’s prison and the nice Russian lesbian. (It may not be a coincidence that all the parts I liked involved lesbians). But on the whole I found it rather disappointing. I do enjoy the re-writing of fairy tales and think perhaps we should have read Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose of Sherri S. Tepper’s Beauty instead, both of which I remember as being very good.
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