You are asked, in turn, to experience the circus as yourself, the reader, to experience the circus as Bailey does, and to experience the circus as different performers do. This novel’s postmodern and circular story construction plays with time in a way that can sometimes be disorienting. I find it reflects the transitory nature of the circus, the reading of the novel, and the passing of time. You have to value the time you spend in each location more because of the inevitability of leaving but, when you return, it will remain the same. Each setting is complete in its succinctness, a world unto itself, and yet strangely temporal in its staticness. All of the exhibitions at the circus are poignant and delightful - from the airy Cloud Maze to the delicate Ice Garden, the impossible Illusionist’s tent to the mystical Wish Tree, the stargazer to the carousel.
The Night Circus’s greatest strength is in its descriptions. The stakes are high, and the innocents drawn into their conflict are many but, the results of their challenge are uniquely beautiful. Their fighting ground is the exhibitions of Les Cirques des Reves, the eponymous Night Circus. Marco Alisdair is an orphan taken in by a man without a shadow or name who trains him to be secretive and isolated. Celia Bowen is the daughter of the famous stage magician Prospero, who performs actual magic publicly with reckless abandon. The plot is simple: Two magicians set their apprentices against each other in a challenge as old and powerful as they are. The destination is very much in the journey - a journey that can be revisited at any time. It’s a story about love and loss fate and faith and choices art and magic illusions and secrets and dreams kindness and cruelty passion and sacrifice and memory. It’s an ethereal labyrinth of a novel, filled with a carnival-esque sense of joy and wonder and tinged with bittersweetness. This December, if you’re looking for a book to get you in the proper mood, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus is it. While Halloween is the best time of the year for the spooky, the strange, and the eerie, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy that feeling throughout the year.
0 kommentar(er)
