WEEK 7 - The Novel of Spiritual Education: "Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

Cover art for Erin Morgenstern's "Night Circus"

It is a risky business indeed to devote nearly 400 pages to a circus that occurs at night and is famous for doing "wild, magical, life-changing, impossible things." Like a magician, the writer of a genre such as this must pull the rabbit from the hat, cut the lady in half, make the elephant disappear and so on. We long to be fooled, and Erin Morgenstern works hard to do just that by creating a fantastic sense of magic in this novel.

Perhaps one of Morgenstern's most remarkable feats is the creation of Marco and Celia (enter, main characters!), both of who, over the years, become passionately involved in the Night Circus's performances and acts, as well as, inevitably, with each other. Their prescribed competition becomes a mutual test of love. Whether they will destroy each other and the circus into the bargain, or whether they can escape their magical indentured servitude and rewrite their fates, emerges as the novel's central question. The stakes are high, and yet it is not particularly for the passion between Marco and Celia that this reader kept turning the pages.Rather, I was compelled by the world itself – by its saturated colors and textures, its unexpected smells and tastes. It is – a surprisingly rare thing in fiction – a strikingly beautiful world, in spite of its darknesses. What is even more interesting still is the fact that both characters are polar opposites. Celia grows to be an illusionist whose illusions aren’t really illusions while Marco can create entire worlds at will, invented environments of great beauty, simply by passing his hands over one’s eyes. Eventually, of course, they meet, fall in love, defy their fate. A pair of star-crossed lovers... er, magicians. They are a tender adolescent pair, whom some would even call Romeo and Juliet. 

I did notice however that in the overall execution, there is a notable lack of specificity, resulting in too many generic sentences such as:

“The air itself is magical.” 

“Every element of the circus blends together in a wonderful coalescence.”

“Candles glow in stained-glass sconces, casting dancing light over the party and its attendees.” 

We are, in other words, continually told how magical the circus and its inhabitants are without ever being truly surprised or entranced. Moving onto the darkest and most engaging element in the novel though, it's not the circus but the relationships between the children and their guardians, who resemble overattentive and controlling parents (to which I can sadly relate, as well as recognize in today's modern media).

Strangely, the two most powerful kinds of magic there are — the power of cruelty and the power of love — receive the least page time here. The lovers dully unite against a common foe (their parents, essentially) with and "tidal pull" between them whatsoever. I almost wish that Morgenstern had spent less time on the special effects and more on the questions that runs ignored (more or less) throughout the entirety of the book: Can children love who were never loved, only used as intellectual machines? What kind of magic reverses that spell? It’s not as pretty a spectacle, but that’s a story that grips the heart.

Overall, the novel is a highly whimsical narrative that is intensely visual-- so much so that what remains in its wake are almost exclusively images – more so than plot, or character, or even the prose itself. Morgenstern paints precise, evocative and visually lush scenes within the tents of her fictional circus. Reading the novel is, in this respect, more like watching a film in the making – not an ordinary film, however, but an imaginative collaboration between writer and reader. I found it enchanting, and affecting, too, in spite of its sentimental ending.