According to the search bar on my blog dashboard, I first wrote about The Night Circus in 2017, in a never-published round up of books I’d enjoyed that year. I wrote ‘The Night Circus kind of about magic, kind of about love, kind of about how bad things happen when men get into competition with each other.’ 2017 me was not wrong, but I reread the novel a couple of weeks ago and I’m still thinking about it, so it’s time for it to get its own post!
Read The Night Circus (2011) by Erin Morgenstern if you like:
- Books set over a long time period and in a variety of beautiful settings. You could make a stunning television programme of The Night Circus with the right writer and a dedicated set design team.
- Clocks. Clocks feature heavily.
- Trusting the author. There are timeline shifts! There are narrator shifts! This is a book for people who enjoy luxuriating in a book, like it’s an extravagant bath. I probably wouldn’t have been in the right head space to reread it while I was finishing my undergrad dissertation, because I needed a couple of braincells spare to pick up what the book was putting down – but coming to it when I had time to sink my teeth into a novel was a joy.
- (Just for the record I LOVE when books make you trust the author, assuming I have those spare braincells. Please recommend your favourite books that do that!)
- Fantasy-meets-fairy tale-vibes. Maggie Stiefvater has written a bit about how the opposite of horror is ‘wonder’ and I think The Night Circus lives in that sort of world: the magic is everywhere, but it’s not a high fantasy with elves and new languages and a map in the front of the book. The world of the book is our world with more eeriness and awe. Wonder-ful.
- (I also LOVE when books are eerie and magical. Please recommend me your favourite books that do that!)
- Black and white colour schemes. I saw Beetlejuice Beetlejuice the same week I reread The Night Circus and I must say the wardrobe and design choices for both provided quite the inspiration for my winter wardrobe. And my summer wardrobe. And my hair.
(There is not time for me to segue into how much I enjoyed Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Ten out of ten, faith in sequels restored. Lydia Deetz would fit right in at the Le Cirque des Rêves.)
I have to go and faff about with my bank, so I will conclude this post here and heroically wrangle with online login codes. There really should be progress awards for successfully completing admin tasks on the internet.
As ever, you can find my favourite reads at Bookshop.org and enjoy some unhinged reviews at GoodReads and StoryGraph.
Look after yourselves!
Francesca
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