“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”
This is how “The Night Circus” begins and it is certainly a grabbing first encounter with the novel. Author Erin Morgenstern doesn’t exactly disappoint with the remaining 510 pages, but she doesn’t really transcend either.
The story centers on two magicians, Marco and Celia, who compete for a victory they do not understand. Amid the increasingly creative battles of sorcery, the two fall in consequential love.
“Consequential” is the perfect word choice for the magicians’ romance, as the lives of everyone involved in “The Night Circus” hang in the balance.
Of course there are smaller, less consequential love affairs transpiring throughout the novel, but the readers are intended to worry mostly about the main protagonists, except the expected romance seems to come out of nowhere. It’s like seeing a man, standing soundly on the street, you look away then glance back, only now the man has fallen, but you never see what tripped him. A more believable affair would be that between the teenagers, Poppet and Bailey. They are young and rash, but at least they don’t label it “love.” The plot was intriguing but poorly executed, like an Agatha Christie mystery.
To give Morgenstern her due credit, however, she is a talented imagist. Her unique and intricate designs of wondrous scenery are the splashes of red in a black and white world (Technically, nothing has color in “The Night Circus,” but, remember, this is a metaphor). A few examples of these splashes are the tents that contain the Wishing Tree, the Ice Garden and the Bedtime Stories.
The Wishing Tree, black and deciduous, burns with the patrons’ wishes; each wish builds off another. The Ice Garden, stark white, hosts living, breathing inhabitants of flowers and animals. Bedtime Stories consist of a slew of stoppered bottles, and inside these bottles are sensations infused with only one of the five senses, smell, but somehow it engages the remaining senses. Each tent is more creative than the last, and I applaud Morgenstern for her imagination.
The author’s masterpiece, really, is the amount of detail shoved into the conception of “The Night Circus.” From the monochromatic color scheme to the particularly delicious-sounding convections, Morgenstern covers every spectacular little nuance. I remember being especially impressed by the literary presentation of chocolate mice with almond ears and licorice tails. They are akin to bogey and earwax flavored jelly beans. I bring this up less to incite the gag reflex and more to appreciate the culinary innovation of candy rodents.
Another mentionable would be the golden nuggets of insight that are found peppered throughout the pages. The Man in Grey, not quite a villain and one of the catalysts in this game of love and illusion, is quoted saying to Widget, a juvenile performer who is still an integral part of the circus, “You may tell a tale that takes residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words.”
“The Night Circus” is the relaxing book I would read between Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and Dickens’ “Great Expectations.” Something to keep the reading bug alive, but nothing I can’t peruse while simultaneously indulging in a favorite television show and cooking Hamburger Helper. I’ll admit, I read four-fifths the first night, so it’s definitely a compelling and forwarding tale, even if it is not my personal literary entrapment.
