Nights at the Circus

Nights at the Circus opens with a bang, in the dressing room of Fevvers, an aerial Helen of Troy billed as “The Cockney Venus” who performs in a London circus show. She is loud, bold, sure of herself, and she is speaking to a young journalist about her legendary life. I liked her instantly for her raucous good humour and fondness for spinning a tale.

Nights at the Circus preceded Angela Carter’s last novel, Wise Children. I haven’t read it, but I have seen a theatrical adaptation of it by the theatre company that takes its name from the book. I got a similar feeling from Fevvers as that which emanated from the actors on the stage during Wise Children – the pure joy of being a performer.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 5

Reading Wales Month 2026

Today is the first day of March and I’m pondering my first book for Reading Wales ’26. I have two books lined up – one from the reading list I put together for my Year of Reading Women and one from my wish list that links to one of the buddy reads chosen by this year’s challenge co-hosts. Which to choose first is the question.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 6

The Heart Goes Last

The Heart Goes Last is a novelisation of Margaret Atwood’s online Positron series, which appeared on the defunct Byliner website between 2012 and 2013. I dimly recall Atwood talking about the series on social media but never read it. It doesn’t matter. The novel stands alone perfectly well. Set in a near future where the aftermath of a financial crash has left the rich sequestered on the West Coast of America, the majority of society mostly jobless and homeless, and the lawless living an unfettered existence trading on a lucrative black market, the novel follows Charmaine and Stan as they try to survive the decimation of their previously average life.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 4

Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark

Passionate Nomad recounts the life of Freya Stark, a British-Italian explorer who travelled extensively in the Middle East and Afghanistan (better described by people from the region as West Asia, which is what I’m going to call it) from 1927 until 1968. Her wanderlust took root during the First World War, when she served with a British Red Cross ambulance unit in Italy, but it was the restrictions of her sister’s life and the overbearing nature of her mother that encouraged her to make the most of her own life and take a boat from Italy to Beirut in November 1927. She wrote extensively about this and all the journeys around Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen that she made subsequently. Jane Fletcher Geniesse’s biography of this remarkable woman explores the adventure Stark’s life became.

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Constance Maud’s No Surrender: A Graphic Novel

No Surrender is a women’s suffrage novel published in 1911, written by Women Writers Suffrage League member Constance Maud. The novel follows the friendship between mill worker Jenny Clegg and the middle class suffragette Mary O’Neil, whose brother is engaged to the local mill owner, Sir Godfrey Walker. It’s a novel that draws on real events and actions in the fight for women’s right to vote and features a handful of characters based on leading women in the movement. This edition is a graphic novel adaptation by sisters Sophie and Scarlett Rickard.

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Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London

Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse is more than the book I was expecting it to be. I thought it was going to be an examination of city streets and public spaces and how they welcome or exclude women, of a similar ilk to Leslie Kern’s Feminist City. It turned out to be more like Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City. Which is fortunate, because I loved Laing’s book and hated Kern’s. Elkin blends personal memoir with the stories of other women who have worked things out through walking and sought anonymity in city streets across the world. It gave me a lot to think about. This one’s going to be a long one – make yourself a brew.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 3