The Night Circus

I have never been delighted by the circus. Clowns are scary, especially the one in the painting in the pediatrician's waiting room when I was small. So, I hesitated to read Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. I almost exercised one of Daniel Pennac's rights of the reader (http://www.walker.co.uk/UserFiles/file/Rights%20of%20the%20reader/NYOR_ROTR.pdf): The Right Not to Finish a Book. This circus, though, is not a typical circus. There are no clowns. There is not one big top. Instead, there are tents like rooms with amazing things to behold, like The Wishing Tree and the Cloud Maze. 


I kept trying, and soon, I was as enchanted with the story as the attendees are with Le Cirque des Rêves. It is a love story, an adventure, and a fantasy about a wager made between two men over the talents of two young illusionists. Bound by this enforced competition, Celia and Marco do not know the rules of the game nor exactly what constitutes the conclusion until the book is at an end. The story bounces around in time and place, and interspersed with it are pieces about the fascinations of the circus tents written by a fictitious clockmaker whose love for the circus is deep and genuine.


Though I'd love to tell more about it, I think it is a book worth reading by others. So I will keep my thoughts to myself. If you read it, I would love to know.