Book: The Night Circus

(Image from C/W Mars catalog)

 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is, at its heart, about a battle between chaos and control (pg.378).  That is the driving force behind the challenge that two magicians, Hector and Alexander, establish and in which they force Celia and Marco, their protégés, to participate.  It is an interesting basis for a story because it takes what would otherwise be a straightforward story about a magical circus to an almost cosmic level.  It is disappointing then that Morgenstern does not give that aspect of the story the attention and importance it deserves. 

Hector and Alexander remind me of fairy tale fathers, like in Rumpelstiltskin or Beauty and the Beast, who gamble with their daughters’ lives rather than their own.  Each man has a different approach to the use and teaching of magic but rather than battling each other to the death to see which method is stronger, they force their students to unknowingly do it for them.  There have been multiple battles over the years in different venues around the world, and the one that they start between Celia and Marco is just one more for them to add to their growing tally.  The egotism displayed by Hector and Alexander is astounding because there is no reason given as to why they feel the need to prove one method better than the other or when they will no longer feel the need to senselessly sacrifice others for their own vanity.  They are god-like in their abilities, near immortality, and lack of concern for the lives of others.  It is reminiscent of Artemis and Aphrodite in the Greek tragedy Hippolytus where a whole family gets torn apart because they get caught between the goddesses in their fight for recognition. 

That is where I think there is a particular lack of world-building in The Night Circus.  I picked up this book on the recommendation of a colleague who suggested that it might fit into the genre of magic realism, which came up when we were discussing The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.  However, I would argue that there is too much explicit magic in the story to really let it pass as magic realism.  As a piece of fantasy fiction I think the story could have benefitted from a bit more context of exactly what magic means in  the world, and why we should care about these battles that take place.  The majority of people in the world of the story have no idea that magic is real and Morgenstern never even toys with the idea of what might happen if large numbers of people figured it out.  There is no talk of needing to keep it secret, no discussion of what makes someone able to perform magic, and no mention of magic’s role in the universe beyond its potential entertainment value.  There also is not much hinted at about why this story, this battle, is so different, other than outcome.  But the outcome does not seem to have much of an effect on anything beyond keeping the circus alive. 

Of course, I am fully aware that I am highly biased toward cosmologies and creation myths and have a tendency to find stories that do not have cosmic consequences a little pointless and dull.  This story was not dull, I could hardly put the book down, but what was driving it for me was mostly the need to find out how Celia and Marco got around the fatal rules of the game they did not know they were playing for much of time.  I had formulated a theory before even beginning the book, based on the summary on the inside cover flap, and I needed to see how my idea compared to what the author came up with.  Still, I found that it was difficult to care about the characters because I did not understand what makes their story so special.  There was so much potential for this story to be a deeply imaginative take on the world, but instead it just presented the story without much explanation of the important pieces. 

The final chapter tries to give the story more gravitas, talking about how stories and tales are their own kind of magic (pg. 381), which I agree with of course, but it feels very out of place in this particular book because that is not really how the story has been presented this whole time.  Usually in the books that I have read that talk about storytelling, it also talks about how storytelling is used to make something or someone significant (The Last Storyteller by Frank Delaney or The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd comes to mind).  But if that is what Morgenstern was trying to do with this story, I do not think it worked particularly well.  Celia and Marco’s love story was too disjointed and rushed to be of any significance and the circus itself lacks a substantial purpose beyond basic entertainment.  On the whole, while The Night Circus was an enjoyable story with the potential to be a modern fairy tale, the disjointed manner in which it was told and the hints at deeper meaning that were never more fully explored did it a disservice.

 

Morgenstern, E. (2011). The Night Circus. New York: Doubleday.

Book: The Secret Life of Bees

(Image from C/W Mars Catalog)

The Secret Life of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd may seem like an odd book for me to be mentioning in a blog about mythology and folklore and to be honest, it is. Set in 1964 South Carolina it is a novel about a young white girl, Lily, who escapes her abusive father and leaves town with her black “stand-in mother”. They are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters who have an elusive connection to Lily’s dead mother. Even though the three sisters introduce Lily and Rosaleen to the religion of the Black Madonna, the story is not overtly religious in nature, but chronicles Lily’s coming of age.

I am mentioning it here, however, because I think it makes an excellent example of something I hope to be talking about again later this week: the importance of stories in the construction of identities. The religion of the Black Madonna is not particularly well defined or all that strict, but it plays an important part in building the community of the Daughters of Mary, who become Lily’s adoptive family of sorts. At the heart of the religion lies the story of how a particular statue that fell off the bow of a ship washed up on shore and got taken in by a group of slaves as a symbol of the virgin Mary, and their hope for salvation.

The story’s importance is highlighted by the introduction that August, eldest of the three sisters, gives the tale at the first meeting of the Daughters that Lily and Rosaleen attend. August astutely observes, “Really, it’s good for all of us to hear it again… Stories have to be told, or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here” (p. 107). This is an idea that is especially apparent when talking about mythology and folklore, but here it also highlights the importance of everyday happenings. All experiences can be recorded and mythologized over time, since every experience plays a part in building history and identity.

Another way this is illustrated is through a short instance later in the book when Lily’s friend Zach gets arrested. Since Lily wants to become a writer and English professor, she keeps a notebook of stories where she fictionalizes many of her experiences since she’s come to live with the sisters. When she visits Zach in jail she says, “ ‘I’ll write this all down for you… I’ll put it in a story.’ I don’t know if that’s what he wanted to ask me, but it’s something everybody wants – for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters” (p. 185). Again, this highlights the idea that all experiences, especially trials of opposition, play an important role in shaping identity, especially when written down and shared in the form of a story. It is through the sharing of stories that experiences are shared and common ground can be found.

Although these pieces do not play major parts in the overall story and message being told in The Secret Life of Bees, I thought it was important to highlight that sometimes themes can be found in stories even when we least expect them. I suppose that storytelling is naturally going to be a theme that is part of all books on some level, but I honestly was not expecting to find much about storytelling and identity when I picked up this book. The idea that all experiences can feed into stories that shape identity is an important one to consider carefully before I jump into my next subject, which might come as even more of a shock (but you will have to wait to find out what it is).

Kidd, Sue Monk. (2002). The Secret Life of Bees. New York: Penguin Books.