A Little Night Circus Please

I am so tired, but it's my own fault I stayed up to finish a new book The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  This is one of the books on my New Years reading list/stack.  As I am with all books by first time authors, especially ones who get a lot of hype I was a little leery of this book.  The premise, two young magicans bound to compete until one of their deaths, with a circus as the venue sounded promising so  I picked it up.  I am so glad I did, it was truly an amazing book.  For as much as I love reading I am pretty nit picky and critical even of books I love so please take any critiques of mine with a grain of salt, keeping in mind that I really love this book so much that it is going on my reread list.

 I think it would be pointless to try and sum up the plot of this book, I noticed that the description given on various book sites just cannot do it justice.  I think that is because this book is not a straight forward telling but more of a bunch of images when put together form some sort of story.  In fact I think images is the best way to describe this book.  The author writes in what I call "chapterletts" 2-7 page chapters that instead of spelling out all this mundane detail, almost paint a few moments in time before moving on to another picture.  I was trying to explain this to my Hubbin the other day (not very well I'm afraid) but essentially I felt as if I were visiting an art gallery where instead of reading the story I was looking at paintings full of rich detail that captured enough of that particular scene, especially when combined with the other "pieces of art" that the story was always present without it being told to you in a more pedestrian manner.

My favorite part was the Night Circus itself.  It is initially the creation of a rich eccentric genius, that becomes the unwitting venue for this fantastical contest.  The contest itself if very subtle throughout most of the book, it in fact turns out to be the circus itself and most of the wonders it contains are in response to the competition.  The author does a good job of showing the Night Circus through various points of view, giving us a huge variety of tents and acts without falling into the trap a lot of writers (especially first timers) do of overly describing things until you are bored of even the coolest things.  In this regards she does an astonishingly good job of finding new ways of showing us this dream like place. Everything in the Circus is black and white, with shades of grey.  The costumes, tents, props, even the cards the fortune teller uses are all lack in color, yet the Circus itself is as vibrant as can be.  Tents include impossible versions of the more traditional acts, acrobats, fortune tellers, performing animals, but also strange and wonderful tents like the Cloud Maze, which is constructed of hundreds of platforms, pillows, cushions and balloons to give the feeling of wandering always upward through the clouds.  Or there is the Ice Garden, where each flower, bench, and blade of grass is made of ice and snow.

One of my few complaints about this book is the ending.  I find in general that even my most favorite books rarely have a satisfactory ending, but that is a topic for another post.  The thing I had a problem with was the sudden switch in style.  All through out the book the writer has maintained a non-linear almost dreamlike quality with view points constantly changing (in an oddly non-confusing manner) very little was said outright, but the last 40 pages or so all of a sudden started sounding like normal pedestrian prose that can be found in any other book.  It almost felt like she realized the book had to end at some point and instead of just letting it float away she jerked to to a halt.  That being said, I probably could not write an ending for this book either :-)

This book is not for everyone.  If you want things explained to you, or you need intense character development then this is not a book for you.  I feel it is more about the experience then it is any particular character or even story.  One does not ask Leonardo da Vinci to spell out the character development of Mona Lisa, and yet one can enjoy the painting and even guess at the story presented there.  I feel the book should be read the same way you would look through an art gallery and really take time to savor each image as it is presented to you.  I give this book 5 out of 5 bags of carmel popcorn with pecans (mmmm I love me some carmel popcorn)

What do you think of this book?  Do you like the surrealness or did you need more grounding?  What tent would you put into this impossible Circus?  What is your favorite circus food?