Clock Dance, Man at the Helm and Nights at the Circus

Oh Willa, have you never grown up? In those early chapters when she was young, she seems far more mature than the sixty one year old of the second half. We get to know her in a glimpse of how she was at ten, twenty and thirty, a neat literary device. So a book of two halves, setting up our "heroine" for the biggest adventure of her life. Well, Anne Tyler doesn't really do adventures, and this is not her best novel. But still an enjoyable, shortish book. 

I loved the first half of this family comedy drama narrated by an adult Lizzie looking back to when she was nine. There were some very funny moments, especially involving her younger brother Little Jack. Lizzie is close to her elder sister (purposefully un-named throughout) who is only two years older. Their upper class mother has never had a job in her life, but is struggling after her divorce. The novel does run out of steam half way through, but overall an enjoyable read. 

I made it past the first hundred pages, to the end of the section in London. But that was enough. It was weird and fantastical, not my usual kind of book. But I did want to try an Angela Carter novel, having seen her "Wise Children" adapted for the stage. There were parts that were atmospheric and original, but the writing seemed deliberately awkward.

"The toil-misshapen back of the baboushka humbly bowed before the bubbling urn in the impotently submissive obeisance of one who pleads for a respite or a mercy she knows in advance will not be forthcoming, and her hands, those worn, veiny hands that had involuntarily burnished the handles of the bellows over decades of use, those immemorial hands of hers slowly parted and came together again just as slowly, in a hypnotically reiterated gesture that was as if she was about to join her hands in prayer".

If you like this sort of prose. go for it. Otherwise steer clear.