READ THIS! {The Night Circus}

This afternoon, I want to share with you my review of this month's READ THIS! novel, The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern.

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A novel that I resisted reading for a long time, due to my wariness of any description including magicians, I am so sad that I let my pre-judgments get in my way. This is a novel that weaves a tale of love and passion, among one of the most intricately detailed settings that one could ever imagine. The Night Circus is heartfelt, breathtaking, and will transport you to a world that you will dream would really appear before your eyes. Morgenstern makes us hope that Le Cirque des Rêves would appear in our hometown and that we may be able to experience it's power, if only for an evening.

Amazon describes the novel as this:

"The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands. True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead. Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart."


And it certainly opened up my heart and my senses, as I followed the story with eager anticipation. This story is not written in a singular time period, instead jumping back and forth between two distinct periods of time, until we see the stories collide before our eyes. Did you enjoy this or did you find it harder to keep up with what was happening in the novel? And if you could pick your favorite part of the circus, which tent would it be? I wouldn't be able to wait to see the clock or the memory tree - and how magnificent they would each be in real life. Did you find yourself bored with the story, or were you as incredibly enchanted as I was? I'd love to hear your take on this!

And now, I would like to introduce next month's READ THIS! novel. When I was younger, my mother instilled in me the importance of reading, and cultivated my love for books - making me the voracious reader that I am today. In her honor, as this month celebrates her as a mother, and her as a woman (her birthday is in a few weeks!), for May's READ THIS! novel, I chose The Flame Alphabet, by Ben Marcus.


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Amazon describes the novel as this:

"In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a work of heartbreak and horror, a novel about how far we will go, and the sorrows we will endure, in order to protect our families. A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children’s speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction. With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parents’ sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isn’t so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition. The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love? Both morally engaged and wickedly entertaining, a gripping page-turner as strange as it is moving, this intellectual horror story ensures Ben Marcus’s position in the first rank of American novelists."

While this may seem like a strange choice to honor my mother this month (if my words were toxic, my parents wouldn't have stood a chance), as a child one of my favorite books was, and still is, The Girl Who Owned a City by O.T. Nelson, about an epidemic that killed everyone over the age of 12. I read this book more times than I could count and The Flame Alphabet seemed as though it will have a bit of the same spirit in it. I cannot wait to get into it and I do hope that you'll read along with me!

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1 comments:

  1. Very well written with fantastic description. Magical and captivating.
    I highly recommend this book and I will be reading other books by Morgenstern.

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