The Night Circus
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a story about a circus, one that appears in the night, about it's varied performers, its dreamlike tents and of a duel that consumes both the contestents and its venue.
I found the book generally unremarkable. The premise was what really attracted me to the book; magic and mystery, the promise of battle on the stage of a circus(?). About two thirds of the way into the book, the magic was lets say, lost, and I was skipping over to confirm how I suspected the book would continue and finish.
The book starts off strong – an air of mystery about the circus, a challenge, flawed but endearing protagonists with a promise of lot more to come, but looses its footing somewhere in the middle.
HERE BE DRAGONS
Bailey's story feels entirely out of place, written almost as if to justify the end of the book, which itself feels clichéd and contrived. It meanders into the classic love triangle with the actual challenge taking the back seat and dissolves into a boring romantic drama. The further I got, the lesser I cared about the fate of our heroes, I couldn't care who reigned supreme. I didn't believe that both Marco and Celia fall maddeningly in love, in the same way I didn't believe Marco and Isobel did. It, didn't feel "real". Like the book was telling me this had happened instead of it being the natural course of events. It felt, like information, exposition.
The atmosphere that the book creates with the circus, its tents and their denizens though is fantatstic. The evocative detail of what the circus smells, tastest and looks like makes it almost ethereal. It's assortment of dreamlike tents, coupled with a vibrant cast of unique performers taking the stage. I often found myself savouring the prose word for word, trying to imagine the picture the author paints, a balance between the real and the magical.
The book (unsurprisingly) ends with a happily ever after. The final conversation of the book, trying to relay a message about the power of stories, fell flat on my rushed ears. It did however remind me to revist one of my absolute favorite nerdwriter videos1.
I did get what I was looking for with this book though, a way to get back into reading with something I didn't care too much about.