The Night Circus![]()
- Author: Erin Morgenstern
- Published: 2011
- Publisher: Doubleday
- Pages: 387
- First Line: “The circus arrives without warning.”
- Last Lines: “You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.”
- Film Version: none yet
- First Read: Spring 2011
While a lot of the time I am quite glad to not have to work in retail anymore, there are definitely reasons I miss working in bookstores. One thing I miss dreadfully are galleys. Galleys are the unfinished version of a new book, printed in paperback and sent out by publishers to get people to read the book before it is officially available so that once it is officially available they will be interested enough in pushing the book. Such galleys can be an incredible thing that get passed around (which can be a bad thing – my galleys of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Justin Cronin’s The Passage never got back to me and I ended up having to buy hardcover copies). I think at least seven of my co-workers read my galley of The Tiger’s Wife and everyone instantly loved it. That book in particular is relevant to this review for several reasons. First, though the cover (not as good as the final printed cover but still nice) and the title made me pull this book off the galley shelf to look at, it was the blurb from Téa Obreht, the author of The Tiger’s Wife on the back that helped seal the deal for me reading the book (that I loved it was due entirely to the book). Second, The Tiger’s Wife was one of a number of books from that era (late 00’s, early 10’s) in which first-time female authors wrote brilliant novels (often with a touch of fantasy involved) and this is another of those examples (actually, so is The Song of Achilles but I just didn’t realize it until later). But third, after some really long waits, those authors are finally writing more. While I’m still waiting for a second novel from Heidi W. Durrow and Helene Wicker, Obreht’s second novel was published last fall (it’s good – not as good as Tiger’s Wife but that’s a high bar to hit again), Morgenstern’s second novel, The Starless Sea, also came out in the fall (I bought it in the same shopping excursion as I bought Song of Achilles and I’ll be reading it next) and I’ve entered a raffle to win a galley of Susannah Clarke’s new novel (her follow-up to Jonathan Strange, finally!!!!). The key thing about Morgenstern’s second book is that this one was so brilliant and captivating that I bought (like with Obreht) her second novel in hardcover without even taking a look at it. When you succeed that well on your first novel, you get my full attention (and money) for your second.
Though the first line above technically begins the book, and really ends it in a sense, the story really begins with “The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theater office , but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and it is also the first to arrive carefully pinned to the coat of a five-year-old girl.” From there we meet Prospero and before too long, his old friend and rival, Alexander. Then we get into the story of their two students, pitted against each other in a game that neither is allowed to truly understand but which brings to life a world of magic that envelops far more than them and for far longer than anyone involved could have ever thought possible. There will be love, revenge, betrayal, hate, lust, and most of all, magic, in the magical circus that begins traveling the world.
I really don’t want to say too much more. I have an e-mail from Morgenstern that I have saved since May of 2011 (when I read the book, some four months before it was released) from after I read the book and made a casting suggestion (the film rights were sold to Lionsgate before the book was even published but it has to yet to be made into anything but that happens a lot to good books – the film rights to The Passage, another book I read in galleys, were also already sold before the book was published and that was eventually turned into a badly conceived television show). I don’t want to mention that suggestion but I will just say that she enjoyed the suggestion even though we agreed the person was too old.
So, read this book, please. Read it with your own ideas in your head and envision what this circus could be with its magical twists and turns. Then go back to it again as I just did (before reading her new book) and discover the things you had forgotten or different assumptions you made that turned out to be wrong and enjoy every page right down to the end.