Her characters are well-drawn, with even minor players possessing compelling backstories and traits (which is helpful when seemingly minor players unexpectedly step forward to claim their rightful places in the larger narrative).
Morgenstern's storytelling is tightly controlled, free of excess and purple embellishment, utterly realistic and rooted in the human.
The story is told in rich but straightforward prose, with a linear narrative that unfolds logically and systematically, although it has the tone of a dream. The Night Circus, magic is real (the rings used to seal the challenge, for example, burn into and vanish within Celia and Marco, leaving them with scars but also helpless to resist their involvement in the competition), but there is no literary trickery here. A cauldron with a flame that never goes out a growing, living garden of ice a Wishing Tree a beautiful magician who can bring books to life, and who vanishes at will … the circus is seemingly endless, a mystery in and of itself.Ĭelia joins the circus, while Marco stays at a distance behind the scenes, but their actions are connected, all part of the challenge their sponsors imposed upon them, a competition that turns into a dance, and a courtship, and a dream. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not." Inside the iron gates of the circus is a world of wonders, a dream-state that "Opens at Nightfall, Closes at Dawn," a warren of black-and-white striped tents, each housing marvels that surpass the imagination, an experience so life-changing it begins to gather a cult following who will research and travel around the world (despite the circus's lack of tour schedules or advertising) to enter the nocturnal marvel over and over again. "No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. The venue for the challenge is a mysterious circus, Le Cirque des Rêves (The Circus of Dreams). The challenge in a competition of magical skills and training, the nature and rules for which are – and will remain – entirely unclear.
Hector Bowen, who performs as Prospero the Enchanter, pits his illegitimate daughter, Celia, who has a natural talent for magic, against Marco, the foundling protégé of the mysterious Alexander. The novel begins with a challenge between two aging – or perhaps ageless – magicians. One of those rare, wonderful, transcendent books that, upon finishing, you want to immediately start again. A book that makes the hair on your arms stand on end, and that has you picking up the phone or sending a text to tell everyone you know, "You have to read this." Occasionally, though, and all too rarely, you'll encounter a book that stops you in your tracks, a book the experience of which tears you open and leaves you gasping, a book that affects your head and your heart in equal measure.
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