I really liked ‘The Starless Sea’ by this author. Maybe the pacing and the execution weren’t perfect, but many elements there drew me in. But once I’ve read ‘The Night Circus’, the first book by Morgenstern, I think that it’s a proof of certain thing. She’s become a better writer, why not. However, it’s hard for me to enjoy ‘The Night Circus’ as a cult classic because, at least to me, it wasn’t good enough.
‘The Night Circus’ tells a story set from the 1870s to the first years of the 1900s about a magical circus owned by Christopher Chandresh Lefevre, the son of a French ballerina and an Indian prince. Christopher Chandresh gathers people with unusual abilities to create an equally unusual place. Among them, there are Celia and Marco, two young people who’ve been neglected, each in their own way, but who find friendship and love in the circus. There’s also Bailey, a farmer boy from New England, whose life is connected to the circus in a way he won’t discover for years. That’s all. That’s the story. We are promised a dramatic magical confrontation that will lead to a tragic end, but the end is all but tragic. And not that I’m disappointed because of that. I don’t need duels, adventures, and great plots to take a liking to a fantasy or magical realism setting. Actually, sometimes ordinary events are more interesting to me than the supernatural ones because you can learn a lot about the characters from the daily minutiae of life. Such books as ‘The House of the Spirits’ or ‘Tehanu’ are more about this than about anything else. ‘The Night Circus’ doesn’t give us this quotidian substance. It gives us many luscious descriptions and dazzling effects, but all those fancy things aren’t substantial. When there’s no traditional adventure, there should be some other meaningful aspect of the story. You won’t find it in this novel.
I don’t mean it’s bad. Really, I’ve read many novels that were duller. Not to mention that as for the present tense narration, the book’s style isn’t bad. Very few authors know how to distinguish themselves when they use this tense, and though Morgenstern isn’t one of them in her first novel, she isn’t one of those authors whose narration, supposedly thrilling and captivating, turns out to be boring and distant. However, if the book was so celebrated, I hoped to get something more impressive. And I didn’t.
The problem of this story is what I call the ‘whimsical fantasy’ subgenre. I define it as fantasy filled with ‘lush’ descriptions and ‘surprising’ events, trying to emulate the atmosphere of a carnival. Except for ‘The Night Circus’, the Caraval Trilogy would be a good example of this strain. It’s intended to be thrilling and exciting, but the problem with those books is that often, there is nothing much but impressions there. And impressions can’t replace well-drawn characters and consistent setting. It didn’t work in the Caraval series, and it doesn’t work in ‘The Night Circus’. The late 1800s and the early 1900s in the latter are barely sketched. The story is set in the past just to make it more ‘lush’ and quirky, not to tell the reader something new or important. And, sure, novels don’t have to tell new and important things. But if you get a book that so many people described as a cult classic, you have the right to expect something unusual. ‘The Night Circus’ didn’t give me anything unusual.
To my mind, it isn’t bad, but it is overrated. If you wonder what Erin Morgenstern books are about, I’d recommend you ‘The Starless Sea’.
Left Hand of Fiction 