April 2013: Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

[Polly Parrot]

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.
True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

From: http://erinmorgenstern.com/the-night-circus/

Discussion starts April 1st.

 

[Polly Parrot]

Feel free to add a review here.

 

[Robert]

This could be a fun read. I put a hold on it at the Library so I should have it in a week or so.

 

[pontalba]

Just finished. Interesting back and forth narrative, must pay close attention to the dates.

 

[Meadow337]

the title of this thread has a typo in MaRch

 

[Peder]

April?

 

[Polly Parrot]

Whoops. Must've been sleeping when I created the thread.

 

[Meadow337]

never mind LOL - we all have our moments

 

[Peder]

I read the reviews and blurbs for the book on its Amazon page before reading it and thought they must be wildly overstated and extravagantly effusive. You know the way blurbs can be. Now, having finished The Night Circus, I've gone back to look at the Amazon page again and I am no longer surprised by people's and reviewer's enthusiasms. They fit pretty well with the book. It is indeed one of the more remarkable books I have read in a long time. Adult fantasy is not one of the genres I read, but this book carries it off. Morgenstern's writing is clearness and simplicity itself, but oh what wonderful fantasies she can create with simple words. To use an obvious pun, her writing is magical. She describes a Circus such as has never before been seen and a suspenseful plot that keeps the pages turning. I'm not sure that any other adult fantasies can come up to this one; you tell me.
But read and enjoy this one!

 

[Meadow337]

I am roughly half way through and what a load of muddled ..... this is. Writing in a wafty airy-fairy style with no pretense to an actual plot does not make for easy or pleasant reading. It's like she wrote a story, cut out all references to a plot, then cut the remaining bits and jumbled them up randomly as the "story" jumps about between times and characters randomly. The device, when used intelligently, is a wonderful way of introducing the reader to different facets of a story, but there has to be an intelligent purpose behind it which can be perceived at all points. This is just jumbled nonsense without meaning.

Half way through and there is no sense of who any one is, why they are doing any thing, nor even any real sense of what they are actually doing. Its like wafting through some one else's very disconnected dream that they are relating while thinking about something else entirely so that there is no sense or connectivity or logic.

Skipped a bit to get to the end because I couldn't bear reading any more ... my opinion hasn't changed. Total cop out - its left as airy fairy and unexplained, unconnected and disjointed as it was all the way through.

What an excessively annoying book.

 

[Peder]

Well, Meadow, I can only say that I have looked at the opening pages of the Game of Thrones and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, and neither of those appealed to me enough to continue reading them. Night Circus did appeal to me. But, as I said, adult fantasy (YA fantasy?) is not my genre, so what do I know?

 

[pontalba]

Wow Meadow.
First, I recalled your mentioning you wouldn't even read Night Circus because....well, I'll quote your post in the suggestion thread.....

I second Life of Pi. Just read it in anticipation of seeing the movie. Fascinating book. I don't second The Night Circus. I don't read dark fantasy. Beautifully packaged darkness is still dark.

So, I was a bit surprised as you were so vehement in your rejection.

But to pick up the thread of my post...Wow.
It's fantasy, so it's bound to be in a rather "wafty airy-fairy style". It is a rather long, drawn out sort of twisty plot, and one has to read the entire thing to really get it. But if it didn't hold your interest, that's the name of that tune.

 

[Peder]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Late returns yet to come in.

 

[Meadow337]

well I decided to give it a go in the interest / hope of joining in the discussion. Turned out to be not as dark as the opening pages suggested. I disagree that fantasy is bound to be airy fairy, quite the contrary in fact, all the fantasy I read is very grounded, just grounded in an alternative reality of the author's creating.

Peder, I didn't mean to suggest your enjoyment was wrong, if it appeals to you - fantastic. It just did not appeal to me.

I don't even object to the style, because I have read many books using that particular device, Neil Gaiman's Ananzi Boys comes to mind most immediately as an example, but you always know where you are with the characters when used properly. You aren't just left in a continuous puddle of confusion

 

[pontalba]

I'm glad you did join in Meadow, differing takes on a book make the discussion more lively. I agree that it doesn't absolutely have to be airy fairy...it is only far more likely to be as such. Stories grounded in other realities have to have an air of unreality to them.

This book was a little different for me as well, but I'm certainly happy to have read it. I believe the author will improve with time and experience. The seeds are def there.

 

[Meadow337]

It's all very fine and well to take your reader on a dreamlike magic carpet ride, but you can't forget the carpet (plot). You can't set up something as significant or important only to have it dissipate into nothingness over and over. Unless you seriously just want to annoy your readers you have to offer a point, a purpose, an answer, a reason, otherwise why bother? Why should your readers care about any of the characters if you don't give them some reason for existing within the story? Why should the readers care about the contest if there is neither reason, purpose nor resolution?

Every time the author sets up a character to have some significance, within a short bit any significance is gone. Characters die, but don't die. The main characters disappear into the world they created with no resolution of the conflict between them which apparently just continues. Twin births are loaded with portents which in the end mean nothing. People don't age, but no reason is offered as to why and that also means nothing. A clock is created but only seems to serve the purpose of offering the author another opportunity to waft into admittedly rather beautiful, but self indulgent and purposeless prose.

Enormous effort is put into creating an army of followers of the circus, beautifully described and outfitted with their identifying splash of red in the otherwise colourless world ... but that too has no meaning, purpose or significance.

It's frustrating and annoying. It as I said like listening to some one attempt to describe a dream they had last night while they are frightfully busy doing something else and so never actually relay the important information like what happened and why it happened. All you get are these disjointed bits of description ... there was a circus, yeah I don't know why it was there, it just appeared, and there were these tents, yeah and .... then you walked up these ramps ... and there was snow .. and a person who looked like a statue but wasn't... oh yeah and um no one got older, and there was a contortionist right, and ... oh yes there was a competition kind of thing like magic you know ... and then there was this other guy, but .. yeah ... oh and a clock ....

 

[pontalba]

I don't want to say too much about the details this early on as some have not finished. But it seems obvious that the circus is only a public venue for the puppet masters manipulating Celia and Marco. First training, then pitting them against each other. I thought it made it more interesting that Celia and Marco didn't know for sure who their opponent was, only that there was one.

In the beginning the venue was agreed upon between the "fathers", and the reader was told that ordinarily the venue was not public, so that detail was given quite early on. They also made it quite clear these contests had been going on for.....a very long, but unknown time period. I thought centuries were hinted at.

The author did make me care about the characters, and I thought she did a fair job of showing and not telling. I appreciate a certain amount of ambiguity in a story.

 

[Peder]

It's all very fine and well to take your reader on a dreamlike magic carpet ride, but you can't forget the ...
... and then there was this other guy, but .. yeah ... oh and a clock ....

I'm not so sure I go along with your long list of specific prescriptions on how a novel must go.

Some time ago, I read some piece of lit crit by some serious person and the opening question was "What is a novel?" revolving around the fact that the novel was a relatively late and initially unregarded addition to the field of written works.

The author observed that the question was difficult to answer precisely but that he thought the best way to look at it was simply that a "A novel, is a novel." A free form creation by an author carrying the reader along in any original way the author chooses.

I can easily agree with you, Meadow, that some styles can be irritating or nearly unreadable, as you suggest for this novel, but then so are Faulkner and Ulysses to name two other well-known possibilities. Some people read them, and they are on the shelf. For Night Circus, I'm inclined to call it likewise a matter of style, rather than incompetence, whether or not at the same time one finds it irritating.

 

[Meadow337]

I will concede that perhaps the author intended to create this wafty dreamlike world without point or purpose or meaning or even any kind of attempt at coherence. If so she succeeded. (Although I will still go with the scissors and a draft of the novel theory - cut out all the bits with plot, then cut the remainder into random segments and muddle them up and voila! instant disjointed novel).

Nonetheless I will also maintain that if you want your readers to actually care, you have to give them something to care about which usually includes giving your characters purpose.

I didn't even care enough to hope (as I sometimes do) that some one in the novel would please put the characters out of my misery and off with their heads ASAP. I didn't care if they got together or not, won the competition or not, I didn't even care if the circus disappeared in a puff of smoke or not. I wasn't even annoyed with anything in the book I cared so little - I was just annoyed that it was such a remarkably unsatisfying read.

But WHY? do that? To what purpose? Aimlessly drifting your readers along in a tale that starts somewhere in the middle of the story, wafts along randomly and never actually concludes seems to be an exercise in futility.

Investigating this a little further it seems that the author did actually intend to write a plotless novel. Again I find myself asking WHY? Then it becomes, not an exercise in futility, but an exercise in "cleverness" - to show you can. And that then, is an exercise of pure vanity. With effort almost anyone can be "clever" in that way - but I much prefer a poorly crafted novel with a good plot, than a cleverly composed exercise in vanity.

The author is also deeply into tarot (which would certainly explain my immediate instinctive reaction to reading the extract) and perhaps there are a lot of tarot inspired vignettes in the story, but I don't know or care to know enough about tarot to explore that aspect of it.

 

[Peder]

I will concede that perhaps the author intended to create this wafty dreamlike world without point or purpose or meaning or even any kind of attempt at coherence.

That was not exactly my point in mentioning Faulkner or Ulysses.

Regarding coherence and structure, I think it is there, and even can be seen to follow a typical 5-stage dramatic sequence: 1) introduction, 2) rising action, 3) climax, 4) falling action, and 5)denoument, with elements of mystery building throughout.