London
Nights at the Circus is a novel in three parts, with each part distinguished by its geographic location. The novel begins in London, in Sophie Fevvers' dressing room in the Alhambra theater. Fevvers is a celebrity aerialist who has just concluded a world tour, and has returned to her native London for a victory lap with her adoring hometown fans. The entirety of Part 1 technically takes place over one long night, after a performance, as Fevvers, with the help of her adoptive mother, Lizzie, relates her biography to a skeptical American reporter named Jack Walser. They tell the many tales that compose Fevvers' childhood and early adulthood from her cluttered dressing room, and the density and uninterrupted character of their dialogue, mostly comprised of long, narrative monologues about Fevvers' past, transport the reader out of the dressing room and all over London, to the point where Fevvers and Liz's storytelling undermine the actual, established temporal circumstances under which they are telling the story, and the reader may at times forget about the presence of the reporter, or that they're actually sitting in her dressing room.
Fevvers begins her story with her birth: she claims to have been hatched from an egg and left on the stoop of a brothel owned by a woman named Ma "Admiral" Nelson. Lizzie, who worked for Ma, took Fevvers in and raised her at the brothel. Before long, it was clear that Fevvers had wings growing out of her back, complete with feathers. Ma put Fevvers to work as a mascot for the brothel, and she spent her days perched on the mantel as a cupid figure. Even through adolescence, Ma never pressured Fevvers to engage in sex work, and instead, she graduated Fevvers' statuary presence to "Winged Victory," and bequeathed Admiral's sword to Fevvers for her to hold resolutely in her hand.
Ma "Admiral" Nelson dies suddenly after being trampled by horse-drawn carriages, and, because she left no will, her puritanical brother inherits her establishment. He immediately evicts all of the women who live there, thus forcing the familial unit of Ma Nelson's brothel to go their separate ways. Lizzie and Fevvers go to Lizzie's cousin's home in Battersea, where they've been sending money over the years. The cousin and her husband own an ice cream shop, and they have young children whom Fevvers and Lizzie absolutely adore. For a while, they live happily in Battersea, until circumstances again turn for the worse, and Lizzie's cousin grows ill, as does their youngest child. To add to their struggles, summer is over, and the winter months leave little desire for ice cream; what little business they have suffers for want of workers, with both proprietors indisposed with sickness.
With all of these challenges to contend with, when Fevvers is approached by the wicked Madame Schreck to join her museum of women monsters, she accepts the offer, despite the urging of Lizzie's family to decline. Fevvers joins in hopes that she can provide for them, and figures she can handle whatever dismal conditions and degrading work is involved. But it turns out that Madame Schreck is worse than Fevvers thought; not only is the work degrading and the conditions dismal, but Schreck refuses to pay her "women monsters." Aside from her meager signing bonus, Fevvers is kept as a slave in Madame Schreck's dungeon, along with other women of unusual abilities and forms. Among them are characters such as the Wiltshire Wonder, who is a dwarf and claims to be the daughter of a fairy king, and Sleeping Beauty, a woman who only spends about ten minutes per day awake, and lives the rest of her life in her own dreams.
Fevvers works for Schreck until one day she's bought by a cultist who frequents the "museum." When Schreck tells Fevvers the paltry sum she'll earn from her own sale, Fevvers snatches up Madame Schreck, flies her up to the ceiling of her own vault room, and hangs her from the chandelier. But before she can pillage the safe and distribute to the women the wages owed them, she's kidnapped by Mr. Rosencreutz's massive guards and taken to his estate. Rosencreutz, a pseudonym applied by Fevvers supposedly to conceal the identity of a prominent politician, is a Rosicrucian. He believes that Fevvers is an angel of death, and that if he sacrifices her, he'll attain longevity, if not immortality.
Fevvers escapes Rosencreutz's compound and flies to Battersea, where she reunites with Lizzie. Following her escape, she's hired by a circus and begins her world tour until she eventually catches the eye of Colonel Kearney, and he recruits her to join his Grand Imperial Tour.
While Fevvers and Lizzie tell this wild tale, Jack Walser, the reporter, becomes increasingly hypnotized by the narrative. Big Ben strikes midnight several times throughout the night, and Walser suspects in his half-trance that Lizzie and Fevvers are somehow manipulating time itself. By the time they finish the story, it is almost morning. Walser offers to walk them to the bridge, and they accept. Then, he watches their figures disappear over the bridge and into the dawning horizon.
St. Petersburg
Walser is so taken by Fevvers that he gets permission from his editor to join Colonel Kearney's circus as an undercover reporter. He's hired as a clown, and, in disguise, follows Fevvers to St. Petersburg, where he lodges with the rest of the clowns in the slums of Clown Alley. Meanwhile, Fevvers stays in a five-star hotel and wows Russian audiences, including the tsar himself. Walser trains to be a clown under the tutelage of Buffo, Grik, and Grok. He remains anonymous until morning, when a tiger escapes from its enclosure and chases Mignon, the ape trainer's girlfriend, around the ring. Walser steps in to try and save her, and he's slashed by the tiger, landing his arm in a sling. The tiger trainer, also known as the Princess of Abyssinia, sprays the tiger into submission with a firehose. Walser, his arm thus slung, is dubbed "the Human Chicken" by his fellow clowns.
The ape trainer beats his girlfriend, Mignon, for cheating on him with the strongman, Samson. On a night shortly following the tiger fiasco, Walser witnesses a truly chaotic clown party after hours. He ducks into an alleyway to get some air when Mignon throws herself at his feet, weeping. Walser takes Mignon to Fevvers' hotel, where Fevvers, both flattered that he followed her to Petersburg and jealous that he's shown up with another woman, supplies Mignon with a bath and a box of chocolates. Then, mistakenly thinking that Walser and Mignon are a couple, she books them the bridal suite. Walser leaves Mignon in the suite and returns to Clown Alley, sick with the realization that he is possibly in love with Fevvers.
With his arm in a sling, Walser can no longer write, so he has the depressing realization that he is no longer a journalist disguised as a clown, but simply a clown. While Mignon recovers from her beatings and nights on the street in Fevvers' hotel, Fevvers discovers that Mignon has a beautiful singing voice, so she pairs her with the Princess of Abyssinia, the tiger trainer, and suggests that they work together on a duet act. Abyssinia's act consists of playing piano for the tigers, and her tigers pair off and waltz. In their new act, Mignon sings for the tigers while the Princess plays. Mignon also dances with a male tiger, while one of the clowns dances with a tigress.
On the premiere of their act in front of a live audience, everything goes wrong, starting with the opening act by the clowns. Buffo the Great, veteran of the circus and leader of the clowns, gets so irretrievably drunk that he tries to murder Walser during the opening act and is subsequently carted off to a mental hospital after the show. Then, when Mignon and the Princess go on, the tigress attacks Mignon, and the Princess is forced to shoot and kill the tigress, shocking the audience and traumatizing both performers. Finally, it is Walser's turn to perform. That morning, during rehearsals, her ropes were secretly tampered with by a family of aerialists hoping to put her out of commission so that their act could move back up to the top of the pecking order. Unfortunately for them, Fevvers recovers from their sabotage without injury, and with style and grace. The aerialist family's contracts are terminated after Fevvers presents the Colonel with an ultimatum. That disastrous night, she steals the show again. Her performance brings the audience back to the fantasy of the circus and distracts them from the gruesomeness of what they just witnessed. The Grand Imperial Circus will go on to Siberia, but the chaos of their last performance in St. Petersburg hangs over them like a bad omen.
The night the company is set to leave on the Trans-Siberian Express, Fevvers accepts an invitation to a private dinner with a Grand Duke, against Lizzie's urgings not to go. But the Duke sent Fevvers a diamond bracelet, and she's hoping to leave dinner adorned in yet more diamonds. But when she arrives, she immediately senses danger. The Duke has commissioned a massive ice sculpture of Fevvers to loom over them while they eat, which she finds highly unnerving. What she's really interested in is his collection of Fabergé eggs. He's even had one specially made for her. The Duke forces Fevvers to show him her wings, and, sensing danger, she complies. While he feels up her wings, he finds Ma Nelson's dagger and breaks it in half. In order to distract him, Fevvers starts giving him a handjob. They move around the room, examining the Fabergé eggs, while Fevvers half-wrestles with the Duke to keep him at bay. She sees in the eggs miniature versions of herself. In one, she's in the midst of an aerial routine. In another, there is a miniature Trans-Siberian Express, and in another, the one the Duke claims he had specially made for her, there is an empty, gilded birdcage.
Fevvers experiences a dreadful sensation of shrinking, and she knows that the eggs all represent possible futures. The custom egg with the cage is clearly meant to trap her forever, so as soon as the Duke climaxes, Fevvers takes the opportunity to break away and jump into the train egg, where she falls right into the train car, finds Lizzie, and weeps. Lizzie tsks and resists the urge to say "I told you so." In this disheveled state, Fevvers joins the Grand Imperial Circus on its way to Siberia.
Siberia
It doesn't take long for the animals to fall ill in the harsh Siberian cold. Despite the Colonel's wishful thinking and attempts to keep the elephants warm in their storage car, they're catching pneumonia. The tigers are restless, tearing apart the upholstery in their "salon" car. The clowns are despondent at the loss of their leader, and Fevvers is just about bored to death. But this boredom doesn't last long, because before they reach their first destination, the train derails. The derailing is the work of the brotherhood of free men, a band of Russian fugitives who, after reading in the papers that Sophie Fevvers has the ear of the Queen of England, planned to take her hostage and ransom her for their pardons. Back at their base camp, Fevvers breaks the news to the leader of the group that the newspaper articles are full of lies, and that she does not, in fact, have any relationship with the Queen.
Meanwhile, back at the wreckage, Walser is recovered under a pile of rubble. He has lost his memory and regressed to an infantile state. He's found by a shaman, who takes him under his wing and trains him to be a shaman, too. The shaman believes that Walser's English babbling is actually some pentecostal spirit-language speaking through him. Meanwhile, Fevvers, Lizzie, and the remaining circus crew wander through the Siberian countryside after the brotherhood of free men are swept away in a windstorm with the clowns. They wander until they happen upon a house marked as a conservatory. They go inside, and much to the Princess's delight, find a grand piano (hers was destroyed in the crash). A maestro lives in the house. He was conned into moving to the middle of nowhere by a corrupt mayor, and is delighted to now have two fellow musicians, Abyssinia and Mignon, to play with.
One night, their playing draws out the villagers and many wild creatures into the open snow plains to listen, mesmerized by the beauty of their song. Among the listeners is Walser, donning his shamanic robes. Lizzie, sick in love, tries to fly after him, forgetting about her broken wing. The interruption to the song sends the mesmerized listeners scattering back into their respective corners of wilderness. The next day, Lizzie and Fevvers set out to find Walser (against Lizzie's advice). On the way to the village, they encounter a mother and her recently born infant left for dead in the cold. They carry them back to the village temple, despite the fact that they were clearly left there as a part of some ritual. At the temple, they are ambushed by the shaman, Walser, and a crowd of villagers, but at the last moment, Fevvers spreads her wings and triggers a flood of memories for Walser, who all of the sudden recovers himself.
The Envoi shows Walser and Lizzie, naked in the shaman's hut, about to consummate their love for one another. The shaman and the sacrificial bear have both quite taken to Lizzie, who, dressed in full bear furs, leads them around the village suggesting changes to their customs in favor of gender equality. Carter's sleight-of-hand narration calls the harmonious scene into question as the characters all pass through the turn of the 20th century together.
