The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Final Thoughts

I have an entire library of books. Not as big as the public library, or a school library, but I have many books of all kinds in my collections at home and in my classroom. There is a three-shelf bookcase in my bedroom that needs no bookends to hold everything upright, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in my living room on which books are sometimes stacked two layers deep, and in my classroom I will need to find additional space to put the next volume of books I bring in. I've gathered this ever-growing library through an obsession for collecting and purchasing books that started when I was in elementary school.

I have not read all of these books. Lined up on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in my bedroom are the books I've purchased or been given, but have not yet read. These are my "someday books" (terminology that I use with the students I teach, from Nancie Atwell's Reading Zone method of teaching.) I look forward to reading all of these books eventually, yet while I have them all lined up waiting to be read I continue to visit Barnes & Noble frequently and buy more books almost every time I'm there.

I can't begin to count how many books I have. I suppose that realistically I could, but I have no real reason to and I don't trust myself to make an accurate estimate. The number must be in the hundreds somewhere.

Of all these books, there are only six privileged enough to sit on my Favorites shelf. Seven, as of today.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is the latest of my books to join the ranks of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, David Liss's The Whiskey Rebels, Kathryn Stockett's The Help, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, Sarah Gruen's Water for Elephants, and Rebecca Wells's The Crowning Glory of Calla Lilly Ponder.

These books have all earned the prestigious title of "favorite" from me not only because of their incredible stories (stories that I feel like I could not have possibly thought up) but more so because of how they were written.

Some were written in chapters of alternating points of view from multiple characters, others have an alternation between settings and time periods throughout the book. A couple take place over a long period of time, and they are all distinctly different in their genres and the stories they tell.

I just finished reading The Night Circus this afternoon. Although it is a 387-page book, it took me only about three days to read it (I started it last week and read a chapter or two a night, to try and be responsible with my time management, but in the last two or three days I've gone from below page 100 to finishing the book.) When I tell people I'm reading a book that I can't put down, they of course ask what it's about. I have a hard time explaining the story because it's such a complex one and no one can do it justice by attempting to summarize it. However, I can more easily talk about why I liked Morgenstern's writing so much.

"Mysterious without being creepy" is how I most accurately describe The Night Circus. It is not a circus with clowns, and it is also much more than what the description on the book jacket reveals. The chapters are all relatively short, and are short pieces of different characters' stories written intermittently throughout the book. It's kind of like a puzzle that come together as the pages keep turning, piling up on the left side of the book.

Some are written on Celia or Marco's parts of the story, and those are the most frequently occurring or constant chapters where we see their respective experiences as they grow up and are involved in Les Cirque des Rêves. There are many more characters that we come to know in the chapters containing the story of the group that started the circus, and early in the book you wonder why it jumps ahead in time (each chapter gives the location and the date of when it's taking place) to the story of Bailey, a farm boy in Massachusetts, and his experience as a circus spectator.

Although mostly each chapter is told about a different character in a different place at a different time, it is not as confusing as it sounds because even from early on in the book you can see how each story is connected in some way. It’s like looking at an incomplete spider web – you can see the edges and you know each strand is connected. You can see the strands starting to move inward to a common meeting place, but the web isn’t finished yet and the center is not woven.

Another element I truly enjoyed about The Night Circus that I was a little skeptical about at first was the very short snippet chapters that were strategically placed between every few story chapters. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but there were maybe a dozen of them scattered throughout the book (albeit strategically I’m sure, as I have said.) They’re written in the uncommon second person point of view and are supposed to be the reader’s experiences at the circus. For example (this isn’t directly from the book, just my interpretation): “You enter the tent and sit down. You stare up at the acrobats.” Of course Morgenstern writes it much better than that, I’m just trying to explain what I’m talking about.

Any book that goes on my Favorites shelf must be one that I intend to read again. The Night Circus definitely fits this criterion, as it was such a good story and I’m certain that by reading it again I will notice a lot more detail and possibly some foreshadowing now that I know the story from my first read of it.


My only complaint is that partway through the book I was able to realize in general (from a conversation between Celia and Marco, and remembering previous events from the story) how they would solve the main problem. I wasn't exactly sure how it would play out, but I knew the basics of how it would be resolved.


That being said, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. There was one point when I truly wondered if both of the main characters would survive at the end of the book (I'm not saying if they do or don't!) The complexity of this book forced me to slow down and seriously consider the details I'd read so far and the options for what might happen next. Being my mother's daughter, I found myself too frequently making more out of smaller details than was necessary (Isobel's name, for instance, held no story-changing importance.) Once I was able to let my mind enter the book and just soak everything in without trying to analyze so much I found it much easier to read and involve myself with Celia and Marco.

Morgenstern has inspired me to challenge myself more with my writing. One of the reasons that I was immediately captured into her book, as I’ve said in an earlier post, was that I felt like I could not write such a fantastical or mysterious story and write it well. The elements of magic (or illusion, as it’s more commonly referred to in the book since it’s not like kid’s magic) are so well thought up and described and I didn’t think I could be convincible in writing something like that. Also, the organization of her writing and just her writing itself was superb.

I also remember writing in a previous post how I came across this book because I was involved in the same writing contest (NaNoWriMo) that Morgenstern wrote this book in. That makes me feel more of a connection with her, and I want to write to her to say how much I enjoyed her book and how she’s inspired me to finish the one I started back in November. Not only that, but once I finish my book I really do want to write another one and leave my comfort zone a bit to experiment with new topics, genres, and organizations of writing. I think it will be fun.