Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Spirited away

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday, 2011)

I am going to admit that I held off on reading this book because I was jealous that someone named Erin wrote such a well-received novel. Stealing my thunder and all. But thank goodness I got over this absurdity. Because this book is magical. MAGICAL.

Most of the week I was reading The Night Circus, I spent non-reading time really wishing I were reading. It was transporting. Short chapters (and intros and such) whisk through between characters, times, and places. Which is a little like the circus itself. The circus, which appears as if by magic, runs only at night and only in black & white, and is the venue for increasingly inspired flights of magical imagination.

It is also the venue for a competition of sorts. Two men facing off; their proxies young, well-trained, and mostly ignorant of the rules governing their battle. And can two practitioners of such powerful magic grow to know their opponent so well without falling in love?

The novel is stunning. I reached the climactic scene one sofa over from my boyfriend, who was engrossed in someone on the television. (Fringe maybe?) And when I started silently weeping just because I was too overcome by the emotion of the whole thing, I had to hide it, because how do you explain that you're crying because it's just all too lovely?

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