It’s a straightforward social realist novel, chronologically coherent, and with an ordinary third-person narrator showing us different points-of-view. But it was also a good choice to take my mind off things a bit, because it’s an absorbing novel, shining a light on a way of life that still persists in pockets around Australia, though there are now many more rules and regulations surrounding circuses than there were in Prichard’s day.

And that’s a good thing. Prichard shows in this novel that the cheap entertainment that audiences expected involved dreadful conditions for the caged wild animals, and held grave risks for the performers. Haxby’s Circus traces the tragic transformation of Gina Haxby from a lithe and confident bareback rider to a life crippled by resentment and disability. Her father, Dan Haxby is devoted to his circus at the expense of his family, and this is shown in many ways, from the risks to Mrs Haxby and her babies with annual pregnancies and no access to hospital care as she gets older, to the risks faced by the performers asked to undertake ever riskier acts because audiences had come to expect the frisson of danger alongside their expectation of skilled athleticism. It’s not enough for a dancer to wear glitter and bling, it’s not enough for her to be graceful and svelte, no, she must dance in a cage with lions in order to titillate the audience with the fear that the lions might turn on her.

Max, who had never met a woman so exquisitely finished and fascinating as Lois, worshipped her with school-girlish rapture.

‘Oh, can’t we put her on, Dad?’ she pleaded. ‘She is so sweet … and there’s nothing as beautiful as her dancing in the show.’

Dan, who had watched the dance in the empty tent, with only a few of the artists practising and ring-hands going about their jobs, had nothing but admiration for the dance and dancer.

‘But this is a circus, Max,’ he objected.

‘It’s not enough for work to be beautiful and graceful,’ Gina said, bitterly. ‘It’s got to be hair-raising somehow, freakish, startling or dead funny, for us to put on. The public wouldn’t understand, if we gave it something just beautiful to look at.’

‘That’s right,’ Dan agreed. ‘If she’d do that dance in the lions’ cage now, there’d be something in it.’

‘Dad!’ Max explained. ‘You’d never suggest such a thing!’

‘By God, it’s an idea—’ Dan declared enthusiastically. ‘I’ll see Bach about it. We want to get something new and sensational for Melbourne.’ (Kindle Locations 3839-3847).

The novel also shows the entrapment of the performers.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/04/27/haxbys-circus-by-katharine-susannah-prichard... ( )