Wise Children

Dora Chance and her twin Nora spent their youth performing on early twentieth-century vaudeville stages as the Lucky Chances, and their offstage lives were as flamboyant and unpredictable as their act. They were never openly recognized as the daughters of Sir Melchior Hazard, the celebrated Shakespearean actor. Now seventy-five, Dora sits down to type out the story of their lives, and the account she gives is anything but ordinary.

Angela Carter, known for her vivid imagination, sharp wit and feminist perspective on both grand and everyday matters, wrote this novel as one of her final works. It is a lively family saga that draws on the traditions and enchantment of the stage. Along the way it considers the bonds between parents and children, the fleeting versus the eternal, and the blurred line between what is genuine and what is pretended.