I downloaded an audiobook of The Night Circus from the library and was quite enjoying it as I went on my walks: the narrator had a warm and cultured British accent and there was more than a hint of Richard Harris' Dumbledore in the voice he gave to the man in the grey suit (an experience I found more charming than derivative or annoying). Then we went on vacation and the deerflies at my parents' house prevented me from walking and the title expired and I figured I would just redownload The Night Circus when we got back home. Fate, or maybe magic, intervened. Stepping off of the elevator in our hotel on our return journey, I noticed a Book Swap shelf and was confronted with a perfectly pristine copy of The Night Circus, there for my taking. And so I took it.
I must confess that I was originally drawn to this title by its cover, having run my fingers over its black and white and silver images many times at the book store, but as I don't like to spoil plots for myself, I never read the cover blurb that a lot of readers seem to think was misleading. Since I had no idea what to expect from the storyline, I was surprised to find that it immediately reminded me of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in that both books are set in Victorian times where magic actually exists. I'm not usually a fan of magical realism, but with both of these books I am happy to accept a world where magic can be learned or developed through ancient knowledge. Who wouldn't want to turn lead into gold if it was possible? Unlike Strange and Norrell's open practise of magic, however, the magicians in The Night Circus hide their powers with a wink and a nod that lead their audiences to believe it's all sleight of hand. As Prospero says:
"That's the beauty of it. Have you seen the contraptions these magicians build to accomplish the most mundane feats? They are a bunch of fish covered in feathers trying to convince the public they can fly, and I am simply a bird in their midst."
Not knowing what to expect, I was thoroughly enchanted by the second-person descriptions of the various circus tents and found it suspenseful trying to figure out how they related to the magicians and their pupils and the mysterious competition. The time jumps added to this aura of mystery, and while the dates were hard to keep straight while I was listening to this book, the hard copy I picked up made things much clearer.
I also found Bailey to be a very charming character and was intrigued to discover how he would fit into the main plot. I loved his grandmother's advice, after recalling how his parents had run away and eloped:
"Follow your dreams Bailey. Be they Harvard or something else entirely. No matter what that father of yours says, or how loudly he might say it. He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself."
And, not knowing that this was advertised as a great love story, I was surprised when Marco and Celia fell in love. Love stories would be about the furthest down on my to-read-list, and although this quote is totally cheesy, I smiled rather than gagged:
“Do you remember all of your audiences?" Marco asks.
"Not all of them," Celia says. "But I remember the people who look at me the way you do."
"What way might that be?"
"As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me."
"I am not afraid of you," Marco says.
So now, musing about The Night Circus, I think that the plot, the competition played out on the stage of Le Cirque des Rêves, was an intriguing concept that wasn't fully fleshed out. I think the characters were for the most part kind of flat with unclear motivations and little development. The love story didn't start or grow organically. The world, and the rules for its magic, created by the author were never really established (and it's probably mainly on this point that this book pales in comparison to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell). But it's still a four star book to me. Erin Morgenstern charmed and enchanted, worked some kind of magic, on me through her creation of the Night Circus, its marvels and mysteries. I want to see the Ice Garden and the Wishing Tree and the Bonfire. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Ms Morgenstern's world and it didn't need to tick all the literary boxes to keep me intrigued. I am on the fence about the ending. We learn at the beginning that the word "circus" is from the Greek for circle, and then the story ends with the same phrase with which it had began, it circles back: The circus arrives without warning. Too cutesy-clever? Perhaps. Is it implying that the entire story that precedes this statement is just Widget's mythologizing of events, right on the heels of Alexander commenting on how all storytellers embellish and colour their tales through the lens of their own experiences? And yet, I was satisfied by the entire journey.
After seeing so little of Alexander throughout The Night Circus, I enjoyed these bits at the end:
"Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey."
"Magic," the man in the grey suit repeats, turning the word into a laugh. "This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it. Look around you," he says, waving a hand at the surrounding tables. "Not a one of them even has an inkling of the things that are possible in this world, and what's worse is that none of them would listen if you attempted to enlighten them. They want to believe that magic is nothing but clever deception, because to think it real would keep them up at night, afraid of their own existence."
As I have confessed before, I suffer from bouts of Magical Thinking. I will probably stop when the universe stops favouring me, stops doing things like handing me a copy of a book that I may have forgotten to return to in the end; a book that, despite the wonderful narrator's voice, became much clearer, and enjoyable, to me as an ink and paper experience. Happily, such magic in my life does not keep me up at night, afraid of my own existence. At least not since that whole Communion period, but that's a different story...
