Fantasy Books
| The Night Circus |
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The Night Circus - by Erin Morgenstern |
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The publisher’s blurb for The Night Circus instantly intrigued me:
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 both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Amidst the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone from the performers to the patrons hanging in the balance.
While all of these things are literally true about the novel, The Night Circus defies the expectations set out by the tone of this description. The back cover seems to promise a thrilling adventure, a magical death match between star-crossed lovers. However, the pace of the novel is actually a bit slow, with the magicians’ battle taking place over the course of more than a decade. Additionally, the “fierce competition,” while potentially fatal, does not take the form of actual combat.
Therefore, in The Night Circus, it is not the ferocity of the magicians’ contest that takes center stage. It is not even necessarily the characters, although there are certainly a variety of intriguing ones. Instead of any actual person, the Night Circus itself might be the star of The Night Circus. Its tents are all filled with impossible things: strange illusions and cloud mazes, an ice garden, a carousel of wooden animals that move and breathe as if they were alive, and yes, a number of colorful characters, from the uncannily accurate fortune teller to the mysterious tattooed contortionist.
Detailed descriptions of the circus fill many pages, and although I usually find excess imagery a boring substitute for a swiftly advancing plot, in this case, the images were wondrous rather than wondrously dull. Time is spent describing the strange, the beautiful, and the arresting rather than poring over mundane settings as many description-heavy novels do. I therefore never got bored or felt that my time was wasted, even in passages that did not greatly advance the plot. The overall effect is dreamlike, combining the kind of wonderment found in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series with the beauty and elegance of the book’s ahistorical Victorian setting.
Unfortunately, while the premise intrigues and the writing enchants, the romance here was a bit clichéd. Celia and Marco seem to fall a bit too quickly and deeply into the I’d-rather-die-than-live-without-you sort of love that can make protagonists seem a bit like reckless teenagers, and the resulting dialogue might give cynical readers cause to cringe.
However, as mentioned, the major draw of the story is not necessarily Celia and Marco, but everything that they manage to accomplish with their magic. The way that the Night Circus mesmerizes both readers outside of the book and characters within it is fascinating, and the book is structured in a way that feels leisurely without dragging. Short, cinematic chapters provide us peeks into the lives of numerous characters, and the narrative frequently jumps back and forth in time, allowing readers to slowly gather clues necessary for working out a number of mysteries regarding the nature of the magicians’ duel, its repercussions, and how it might finally be resolved. The way these clues come together in the end is a satisfying reward for readers who persist through all of the book’s 512 pages.
Ultimately, The Night Circus is a magical read, a sort of fairy tale for adults featuring an interesting cast of characters, a fair amount of mystery, and the kind of spellbinding imagery that envelops readers in a vivid, almost filmic experience.
- Kathryn Carty