Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. We’re still experimenting with the format, so this month we’re just doing a review followed by your discussion in the comments!
The Night Circus (2011)
Written by: Erin Morgenstern
Pages: 401 (Kindle)
Publisher: Anchor
Why I nominated this for book club: I was sticking with the NaNoWriMo theme, and this was written over three separate NaNoWriMos.
Premise:
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway — a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love — a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.
True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.
Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.
Book club is intended for those who have already finished the book, so there are spoilers ahead. If you haven’t finished the book yet, check back! We’ll still be here.
Discussion:
I’m not entirely sure how to begin discussing a book that is entirely about atmosphere and only a little about plot. This book is the sum of its parts, and the largest part of this story is the circus, and the circus distorts time and space. This story is also a bit about these two magicians who are pitted against each other, except it isn’t really like that, and if you go into this novel expecting some kind of Harry Potter-style magical battle, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
For one thing, there’s only the vaguest descriptions of how the magic works. Celia’s training is all about experience, and Marco’s is all about knowledge, but that’s about all you know, really. Could anyone learn to do what Marco does if they read enough books? Who knows? The vagueness of the mechanics of the magic probably help to make this story more accessible to people who don’t read fantasy a lot, but as a seasoned fantasy reader, I’m not sure it does the story any favors.
There is a circus, and there are two magicians, and there’s an entire host of people also dependent on the circus, who aren’t aware they’re supporting characters in the battle. What’s that inspirational quote? Everyone’s the hero of their own story? Not these poor saps. I kind of wonder what the turnover rate was after the battle ends and Bailey takes over.
In general, I’m not sure that the characters are this book’s strong point. The secondary and tertiary characters were, as previously noted, very much only there to serve as pawns in the contest. Sure, some of them had deeper motivations, like Isobel the fortune teller who was also in love with Marco, but none of them felt like people outside of their relation to the circus. The main characters were only slightly better, but again, mostly defined in their relationship to each other and the game they were playing. Even their declarations of love felt like they came out of left field. You could argue that they’d been flirting with each other for a while through their creations, and that’s valid, but then I don’t feel like enough time was really spent on their reactions to the creations.
Going back to Bailey though, I don’t know if I was supposed to read anything into the fact that the new circus anchor is named Bailey, but I couldn’t stop thinking about going to Barnum & Bailey’s as a child, exactly one time, on my fifth birthday.
There were quite a few things in it that I didn’t quite know what to do with. Tara’s death, for instance, or Chandresh trying to kill the man in the grey suit and killing Friedrich instead. Was Tara lead there? Was she drawn out onto the tracks by the man in the grey suit because she started asking questions? Why did Friedrich have to die, when he hadn’t questioned anything at all?
The book is very atmospheric, sensory, and for all that, very lovely. The timelines shift around, almost like you’re wandering through the Night Circus yourself, picking up threads of the tale as you head in and out of tents along the path. This worked most of the time, but not until after I picked up the rhythm of the story. For that reason, I wish I’d been able to read this book in bigger chunks than the sometimes bite sized pieces I had to take this week.
Still, it mostly lived up to the hype that it’s gotten since it was published, and I’m glad it was voted for this month.
In Conclusion: At the end of the day, this book is about a feeling. I can’t really describe what the feeling actually is, because I think it might be different for everyone. I leave you, instead, with this:
“Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you’re trapped?”
“I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you’re trapped in,” Widget says.
“And how much you like whoever you’re stuck there with,” Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one. (pg. 175)
A reminder: The book up for discussion in December is Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. Discussion is due to happen on December 22, so there’s still plenty of time to read it! There’s also still time to vote in January’s poll for books about first contact (just scroll to the bottom for the poll).