Wise Children works with ideas about time, life, death and the sweep of history. ‘All writers of fiction,’ said Carter, ‘are doing something strange with time — are working in time’ (Carter 1992). The novel is built around the birthdays of the Hazard and Chance families, 23 April being the 75th birthday of the twins, Nora and Dora Chance, the 100th birthday of their biological father, Melchior Hazard, as well as — supposedly — the date of William Shakespeare’s birth. Carter believed that late twentieth-century English novelists began to write about London just when its history was being wiped out, and Wise Children presents the city at a time of both disruption and regeneration. Sonya Andermahr and Lawrence Phillips argue that Carter should be seen as a chronicler of ‘her times’ (2012, p. 1). Dora Chance considers herself to be ‘the chronicler of all the Hazards’ (Ch. 1): her first-person narrative covers much of the twentieth century and, significantly, its two world wars. The twins are born during the First World War, and their guardian, Grandma Chance, dies during the 1940s Blitz (when Carter herself was born). The tale ranges around the globe ‘to the ends of the empire’ (Ch. 1), to Sydney, Hong Kong, Montreal and New York, but much of it takes place in the south London of Carter’s childhood and the vividly realised worlds of boarding houses and cheap lodgings. The opening lines of the novel offer the reader an unusual perspective on the city:
Q. Why is London like Budapest?
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