The Night Circus
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Paul
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2011/10/26
date added: 2011/10/26
shelves: fantasy, novel
review:
There are some books that are good because they are so gripping you cannot wait to finish them to see how it all ties together, to find where the conclusion leaves the characters or what impact the events will have on the place. There are some books that are good because the world they create is so alive, so wonderful, that you want to just live there forever. Books like this you want never to end. The Night Circus is such a book.
Before I dispense with the gushing, let me just say that The Night Circus has a pretty fatal weakness: There isn’t really a whole ton of tension and drama inherent in the story. In fact, the fulcrum on which the scale rests is whether or not the reader can be enchanted by the idea of Le Cirque des Rêves to the point that threats to the circus itself will provide sufficient drama to propel one through the pages. For me, this absolutely worked. The turn of the twentieth century setting, the dazzling descriptions of marvelous, wonderful exhibitions, even the aura of mystery that surrounds the central cast and the circus itself was so charming that I had no problem just letting Erin Morgenstern carry me away through her dreamlike creation. When the antagonism finally reveals itself (as dimly as it does), it was enough for me. However, I can see where those who are not taken in by Morgenstern’s construct, viewing it more as mere curiosity, would find the book to be plodding, possibly even dull.
Because here is the principal trap of the book that beckons you to just immerse yourself in its environment: Something has to happen there. The book does in fact have to end and usually the characters you’re loving and the places you’re delighted by must change or there is no story at all. This has undone many a promising novel either because the author her- or himself cannot bear to do what must be done and either the book stretches into an infinite number of sequels and re-visitations which dilute the initial appeal or they go nowhere. Occasionally a live-in book will go too far, over-explaining the marvels that elicited the initial attraction until they no longer have any draw.
Fortunately Morgenstern sidesteps this issue because while The Night Circus is ostensibly a book about magic, it is really a book about the magic of stories, the magic of dreaming and creating. Ms. Morgenstern understands stories and therefore she knows she can’t just fabricate the world of Le Cirque des Rêves and then leave it sitting there on the table like some heavy for-show-only centerpiece that serves no function. Cleverly, she uses this knowledge to build the setting and then makes its existence the function, threatening it with destruction while exploring the nature of disagreement, of determination, of consequences both intended and unintended.
The tale woven around the circus itself (which is the main character, make no mistake) is of two young magicians—real magicians, not illusionists of the Harry Houdini variety—pitted against each other in a contest. This is a contest without clear rules, lacking discernible parameters and with an uncertain goal. But it is a contest the magicians are compelled to engage in and one which uses the circus as its playing field. Celia Bowen is one contestant, daughter of the once-famous and now semi-deceased Hector Bowen and her opponent is Marco Alisdair, protege of an enigmatic man known only as Alexander H., if he is known by anything at all. The characters are really just faces and voices for the circus. A minor but easy critique to make of The Night Circus is that Morgenstern doesn’t realize her characters particularly well; everything has an aura of mystery which is somewhat necessary to maintain the mystique of the circus itself, but other than a few minor characters, we never feel like we know the principals any better by the end of the story than we do at the beginning.
It’s okay, though, because they each represent a particular facet of the circus and through the majesty of Morgenstern’s descriptions of the wonderful (and nonviolent) feints and parries Marco and Celia cast at one another we know enough to make the tale work. And it’s not like the characters are so sketchy as to be unlikable or apart from sympathy and/or scorn. Rather, they are as tied to the circus itself as the whole of the novel.
In many ways, The Night Circus reminded me of an adult’s version of the best children’s books. It’s not that The Night Circus is particularly lewd: There is very, very little objectionable material within, but that’s not why it feels child-like. Instead it is the imaginative heat that radiates from the pages, the way Le Cirque des Rêves reminds one of wish-they-were-real locales like Hogwarts or Narnia or the way E. L. Konigsburg depicted the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The best praise I can think to offer The Night Circus is that, in a book about magic that comes from dreams, magic that comes from tales and legends and love and mystery, Ms. Morgenstern demonstrates that this magic is, in fact, very real.