The Night Circus, debut novel of Erin Morgenstern, is another story from a long line of similar ones, about rival performers who fall in love. They are bound to their enmity by a force outside their sphere of control, something started by their fathers, and must continue to hate each other. To do battle till a victor is ascertained. Those tales have always been sad, in the sense that their love is either doomed to fail, or must destroy the confines that contain it, often warranting the sacrifice of something else in return.
And in this story, the setting is a place least likely to harbour a story so bitter--a children's entertainment ground, a locale with connotations of wonder and joy--a circus.
This begins to clue the reader in just how far all deceptions go here. Images for the sake of them. Words for favour, words for control. People going disbelieved, disbelieving; the star of the show disguises truths as lies. Parades lies for glory. And people will see what they wish to see, truths masquerading as lies, lies they wish were truths.
I really do have something for Victorian-esque fiction. Especially fiction like this, centred around a circus that breathes with its inhabitants, dances, metamorphoses, sees insidious infirmity. Stories about shows and displays--beauty for its sake, beauty to bring the spark to the eyes of another, beauty that costs some fragment of the heart. A black and white circus--white flames, black corridors, costumes that do not break anywhere into colour--the chessboard for this battle between bound enchanters, whose endgame terms remain a secret. The bonfire is like its heart, and this heart is linked to the man, but the woman is the performing illusionist, and the flamboyant contest keeps the circus growing, keeps the two competitors attempting increasingly extravagant installations--all in the name of proving the victor.
Then red is brought by the rêveurs, on scarves and in roses, the fanatics who would shed their blood to watch this show. And then in murder, when blood stains the black-white ground so the pristine image is disrupted for moments. And red is brought by the twins born about midnight, in the curls of their hair, when the bonfire-heart is first lit.
Colour themes and images are a centrepiece in this story; they're a substantial part of the plot and sometimes crucial to one's appreciation of events. Some events are detailed for nothing but the poignance of the image that forms, and takes hold, solidifying into a second-long tableau and lingering like a photograph on film.
It is a love story, and those whom I've told know that I adore how the romance was developed, more than ever I have for any other fictional piece. The love story is carried, necessarily, by remote gestures and their symbolism--the couple separated by a thousand miles and a mercurial schedule--and not by look or appearance, not by speech even. Developed upon a series of tricks and illusions that are a grand, expensive form of flirtation--the new tents at the circus becoming introductions, challenges, love letters--magical spectacles seen and exchanged from afar, through which the characters decipher each other's natures and stories.
It is a love story, and those whom I've told know that I adore how the romance was developed, more than ever I have for any other fictional piece. The love story is carried, necessarily, by remote gestures and their symbolism--the couple separated by a thousand miles and a mercurial schedule--and not by look or appearance, not by speech even. Developed upon a series of tricks and illusions that are a grand, expensive form of flirtation--the new tents at the circus becoming introductions, challenges, love letters--magical spectacles seen and exchanged from afar, through which the characters decipher each other's natures and stories.
This is done so well that I can believe in love after two conversations. Because it's not the conversations that matter, and I suppose that's a lesson of the story itself--that the word is worth little in truth. We see what we wish to see, don't we?
I think this book is magical. Meaning that in both the most literal and most figurative of senses. Four hundred pages of it, devoured in a single night, morning and afternoon (unfortunately in digital format, which I regret and must remedy shortly). It was that captivating, mesmerising, enchanting. A lingering spell that seeped through the pages?
The images and the force of creativity behind them are transcendent--not almost, but completely and consummately. We don't imagine white-flame candles adorning trees, or bottles that smell of pirate stories, or labyrinths of vastly differing environs strung together.
And then again there seems an endless iteration of fourth walls, numerous stories within the story told by a character in this story.
Oftentimes, the book itself serves as an example of what is expounded upon--Mr. Lefevre understands audience response, titillation. According to the Burgess sisters, smell and sound manipulate ambience. Widget knows a story is seasoned by the teller's own flavour and biases.
And that's how it is with this book, one that stirs extreme sentiments of both sorts, that employs the strangest and most beautiful of sensory cues in forming the atmosphere, whose words are so distinctively touched by the author's linguistic patterns.
Oftentimes, the book itself serves as an example of what is expounded upon--Mr. Lefevre understands audience response, titillation. According to the Burgess sisters, smell and sound manipulate ambience. Widget knows a story is seasoned by the teller's own flavour and biases.
And that's how it is with this book, one that stirs extreme sentiments of both sorts, that employs the strangest and most beautiful of sensory cues in forming the atmosphere, whose words are so distinctively touched by the author's linguistic patterns.
It's going to be so very long till I can find a book that fills the hole this one left in me when it ended. A warning I'll have to give is that the ending is bittersweet and somewhat piercing, for all the love and hope Morgenstern engendered from the start. Though the words of the storyteller, as always, soothe the wound into something almost sweet. I hope I will find some way to vent my sudden and fierce passion for this piece of literature, this gem that will be for a long while my favourite standalone book in the world.
And I'll definitely have to reread it. On paper. When I'm not reading, I'll get to ogle the beautiful cover design.
