The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Some of you are going to absolutely love this book. I didn’t, but then, that’s just me. Read my other reviews, the things I’m in to, you can probably figure you why this one wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. I read it mostly because the title was intriguing, a book club I’m in had read it before I joined, and it was immediately available at the library.
The story’s not bad, and the writing is consistent. It’s languid, not quit torpid, (although to me it was). Sensuous, sensual, whatever. Although most of the imagery is, by force, black-and-white, Morgenstern paints a vivid picture.
However, I might not have read the book if I had known how dreamy it was going to be. It’s call The Night Circus, but the circus itself , in the novel, is called The Circus of Dreams. I can’t stand reading about dreams. Not just that they’re pointless, cop-outs used by writers who can’t be bothered to stick to their own rules. Dreams are weird, grounded in nothing substantial or meaningful, completely alien—and therefore boring—to anyone except the original dreamer. Or, they’re written about in a way so utterly unrealistic. No one knows why or how we dream, so how can any writer hope to relate dreams in a way that does anything except remind the reader she’s immersed in artifice?
That said, the dreaminess of the Night Circus is not all that bad. Morgenstern offers up a cozy atmosphere, the kind that the “curl up around a good book” type of reader will enjoy getting lost in. There were times when I was counting pages as I read, but others times when I was surprised how much I’d gotten through.
So, while I should give this book two stars, I’m going to add one more out of respect for what Morgenstern has managed to construct—a fantasy, an illusion held together as much by the reader’s willing complicity as by tricks of light and word choice. Just like the circus itself.