Becoming a ‘rêveur’

There are a few books I’ve read over the years that have truly captivated me beyond any others. “The Great Indian Novel”; “Gilead”; “Middlesex”; “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” spring to mind.

And now I can add another to the best-loved list, perhaps almost the very top of it: the freshly-published debut novel by Erica Morgenstern: “The Night Circus”, which I finished a week or so ago.

Ever read a book, love it, then read it again immediately from cover to cover? That.

“The circus arrives without warning.” It’s about magic; about love; about a challenge – a girl and her father, a boy plucked from an orphanage and his tutor. Some readers here might even find that hot, although there’s no kink involved.

It’s about destiny:

“I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held,” Celia says when he approaches her. “Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.”

It’s about storytelling:

“There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves, at least the ones worth something, in any case… And there never are really endings, happy or otherwise.”

It’s erotic, usually implicitly, on one occasion not quite so:

While she undoes button after button, he pulls blindly at fastenings and ribbons, refusing to take his lips from hers. The meticulously constructed gown collapses into a puddle around her feet. Wrapping the unbound laces of her corset around his wrists, [he] pulls her down to the floor with him.”

And them, with fingers stained from a fallen ink bottle, he makes love to her, “leaving faint traces of ink” marking his naked girl.

And it’s utterly, utterly brilliant.

Read it. Read it now. Please?

“I would dearly love to read the reactions, the observations, of each and every person who walks through the gates of Le Cirque des Rêves, to know what they see and hear and feel… We add our own stories, each visitor, each visit, each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.”