The Night Circus

I was in search for a good compelling story that was well written and did a Google search to help find something. On a list of well loved contemporary novels was Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, so I decided to check it out. It is a book about a magical circus and a competition that two circus masters arrange. The arrangement is bound and the stakes are high--Celia is the daughter of one of the circus masters. The other finds a boy named Marco and later on the two fall desperately in love, only to find what the competition actually entails.

I had Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer fresh in my mind, so I found myself criticizing much of the writing. I felt like Morgenstern spent more time describing this circus and its circumstances than digging deep into character development, which is a big thing for me and determines how I'll receive a novel. The plot was indeed compelling, but I thought a lot of times the language and huge amounts of description got in the way. I also didn't like how much Morgenstern relied on the short choppy paragraph technique. But again, I read it with a critical eye.

I hesitate to share my hang-ups with the novel, simply because I know I came to it after reading a book on how to read critically. From what I read prior to picking up the novel was that this novel is enormously popular and well liked, so I hate to have my negativity stand in the way of someone picking up a book she/he might love. That said, I wasn't terribly fond of the book. (Yet did finish it, which says something, right?)