(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.
