Circ

by Iaian Grant (Editor), Simon Fairbanks, Maria Mankin

Razvan Popescu lives in a flat overlooking the seaside town of Skegness. He keeps himself to himself and few know the man at all. Even fewer know his past, which he has tried to leave behind in the Romanian woods.

But when a tattooed man is found murdered on the beach, it is clear that some of that past has followed him to this tacky seaside town. As battle erupts within the criminal fraternity, dark forces gather around the town and Popescu’s acquaintances find themselves dragged into a world of violence, fire and fairy tales.

One thing is the circus has come to town.


Ten To One is a novel writing project in which ten authors write a novel together, seeking the approval of a judging panel and a public vote to keep their character in the story.
Circ, the first Ten To One novel, is written by Simon Fairbanks, Maria Mankin, Yasmin Ali, Jason Holloway, Livia Akstein Vioto, Luke Beddow, Danielle Rose Bentley, William Thirsk-Gaskill, Sue Barsby and Giselle Thompson.

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 25, 2014

Reviews

[Sorcha]

The Summary

Razvan Popescu lives in a flat overlooking the seaside town of Skegness. He keeps himself to himself and few know the man at all. Even fewer know his past, which he has tried to leave behind in the Romanian woods. But when a tattooed man is found murdered on the beach, it is clear that some of that past has followed him to this tacky seaside town. As battle erupts within the criminal fraternity, dark forces gather around the town and Popescu’s acquaintances find themselves dragged into a world of violence, fire and fairy tales. One thing is certain: the circus has come to town. Ten To One is a novel writing project in which ten authors write a novel together, seeking the approval of a judging panel and a public vote to keep their character in the story. Circ, the first Ten To One novel, is written by Simon Fairbanks (http://www.simonfairbanks.com/, @simon_fairbanks), Maria Mankin (June 2007), Yasmin Ali, Jason Holloway (http://www.twitter.com/batlleth), Livia Akstein Vioto, Luke Beddow, Danielle Rose Bentley, William Thirsk-Gaskill (http://www.twitter.com/wthirskgaskill), Sue Barsby and Giselle Thompson. Edited by Iain Grant


The Setup

This was provided in ebook format by the publishers (Pigeon Park Press) a local Birmingham UK publisher, in exchange for a review. The novel was written in an unusual way, as explained to me by Heide Goode from Pigeon Park Press:

We ran a project to select 10 authors from around the world and then got them to write a novel in a knockout style.

It worked like a TV gameshow - each writer took control of a character and then at the end of each round of chapters there was a public (facebook) vote and a judges' vote to see who would get dropped.

What was really interesting was that the writers didn't get overly competitive, they really just wanted to make the book as good as it could be. Circ, the first Ten To One novel, is written by Simon Fairbanks, Maria Mankin, Yasmin Ali, Jason Holloway, Livia Akstein Vioto, Luke Beddow, Danielle Bentley, William Thirsk-Gaskill, Sue Barsby and Giselle Thompson.

The Review:

For a book that has been written by multiple authors, it is gratifying to find that it has come through with a consistent voice - I suspect through the hard work of the authors and editor rather than luck or fate.

It starts ordinarily enough with the body of a murder victim found on the beach in Skegness, a seaside town that has lost much of what little glamour it once had. As the book progresses, there are more murder victims, graphic violence, the small town organised crime boss that is being threatened with take over by the Romanians. In turn, the Romanians have an interesting and useful business in the meat processing plant just outside town.

Quite a few of the adults are damaged in some way. Mungo the clown has descended into drink after the circus had burnt down 10 years previous and as the book goes on, we find out more about both Mungo and the night of the fire. Popescu is now an old man and has to confront what happened when he was working as a policeman in Romania. Bobby, the local crime lord has a bodyguard who may or may not exist outside of Bobby's mind, and both of them become more dangerous as the book moves along.

Because of the way the characters were chosen there were some that inevitably got discarded along the way, some through more violent means that others. I wont say who lives, dies or disappears, because of spoilers but I think I understood why those who faded out did so. The remaining characters in the final scenes were, I think, the right ones to be there, and it was a strong, if occasionally graphic in it's violence, ending.

Ten to One is certainly an interesting way of producing a book and I think that on the whole it works. Whilst reading the book, I certainly didnt miss those characters that faded into the background, but in reading the last chapter where it referenced some of them, I thought "oh yes, them....". I dont think I would have missed them if they'd not been referenced again at the end, but since they were, I felt a little....short-changed? As Iain Grant states in his editor's notes, things had to be removed, some of it fabulous and I dont know if any of the stuff that was removed would have made me feel different. Small niggle in the grand scheme of what was ultimately a decent book produced in an interesting way.

I have recently done an interview with Simon Fairbanks, who is one of the authors, and it can be found here. Some additional information on the way the book was written can be found over on that post, as well as details of Simon's other works.

[James Saldana · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea that 10 writers could come together and produce a cohesive novel is crazy, but somehow the writers of Circ are able to blend the different styles of each writer into a novel that should appeal to everyone. Mungo is the tired sad Willie Lowman of the novel; life has chosen to keep him down. Bobby is the person we know deep down inside who is most like our current boss, evil and unrepentant. Each of the characters has depth and is able to convey and elicit an emotional response. My advice is to read this book, it has something for everyone.

[Carien · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was asked if I wanted to read and review this book, I said yes, because it sounded like an intriguing concept. This book is written by ten authors. Along the way authors and their characters could get voted out of the story, just like happens in some reality shows. So when I picked this book up I expected to read a curiosity to be honest.

To my surprise I was treated to a gripping and powerful story about mistakes, regret and redemption.

Had I planned to see if I could figure out why some characters where voted out of the story, soon I was too involved in the events to do that. Yes, characters died, or disappeared from the story, but in such a natural way that I didn't even notice they had been removed, or if I did, I had the feeling there was no other way this story could have gone.

I had my favorite characters of course. Mungo Joey, a washed-up clown, was my absolute favorite, and I kept rooting for him, hoping he would get through this story alive. This being a book where not all characters make it to the end, I will let you find out for yourself if my hopes were in vain or not.

All in all I really enjoyed this book, and only after I finished it, was I able to backtrack and analyse which characters had been eliminated, and guess about the reasons why. I think these ten authors did a great job in making this story a great one. It might have been written as a sort of competition, but when you read it, you sure won't care about that. It's an intriguing, suspenseful, and beautiful story.

If the Ten To One initiative continues, I will most certainly give the next project a try. I will also investigate the authors who worked on this book, to see what else they have written.

[Katie Cross · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Erin Morgensterns "Night Circus" so I was excited to read this book and bought the paperback.

Not going to lie, I had a hard time getting into it, although I loved the sad clown on the pier. A lot of characters are introduced in the beginning (because of the whole ten to one thing, I think) but after about the first 20-30 pages, I was able to get into it better. My favorite characters amongst all of them became pretty clear at the beginning.

What I was nervous about with this book was reading an entire work of fiction with a moving plot that's supposedly put together by several authors, because I wasn't sure how that would work, but I ended up really liking it. There wasn't such a vast difference in the writing styles that it became distracting or anything like that.

In the end, I really enjoyed reading this book. I didn't find it overly predictable, but had enough of a bread crumb trail to follow and keep me intrigued. Bobby, Nell, and the little girl were definitely my favorite characters.

[Maggy van Krimpen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was curious to see if ten writers could write one novel – how could they keep the storyline going (without falling out with each other)? The answer was for the public to vote each character out as their story bit the dust. Inevitably, nine authors lost out to the winner- ingenious. There’s great diversity of style here – some really rough, realistic underworld stuff and every vice in the book. The language was generally excellent, there was passion in the writing as well as surprisingly strong characters. The innocence of a child was the most hauntingly written of all by everyone, and bothers me still. I’ve not read anything like this, it felt complete at the end, despite my belief that it couldn’t be “whole”. Very neatly and very well done, all contributors have done a remarkable job. Highly entertaining.

[Danielle Blackburn · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was OK - the initial concept of 10 authors with one remaining was an intriguing one, and I did enjoy reading the foreword in how the finished product was pieced together. However, with there being so many characters, supporting characters and plot points, this made some parts of the book lack momentum, detail and structure. However, some parts of the book I enjoyed reading very much - especially those involving Mungo Joey, Gracie Greenwood and Sabine the sword-eater. With this in mind, I would say some parts would work very well on their own as stand-alone short stories. I very much enjoyed re-imagining a place I knew so well in a different context, the backdrop of Skegness - a washed-up place full of ghosts from when seaside towns were booming with popularity. The setting and the characters all seemed to be having some sort of existential crisis which worked really well, but the book itself seemed to be having an existential crisis, too (which didn't work so well!).

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main reason I agreed to review this book is because of the concept. I was interested to see how a story could be pulled off with so many different authors, when the author changed not just from chapter to chapter but within chapters. And where nobody really knew where the story was going t go, because they didn't know when they would loose different stories. Of course it would mean working together, and knowing each others plans for the characters.

I had had the concern that the story wouldn't be very cohesive, that the writing styles of the different authors would be too different. It gelled much better than I had dared hope though. The first chapter, admittedly, took me about the same amount of time to read as the rest of the book as a whole. I think that was just because so many characters needed to be introduced, it was a lot to be crammed into one chapter. From the second chapter on however things continued to get better, until I was enthralled by the end.

As you would expect from a novel where characters were voted out some stories remained somewhat unfinished, and I would have liked to see what would have happened to some of the characters later. I think that shows good writing though, that I became interested in the characters.

The story itself was sometimes a little strange, which may be due to the nature of the peculiar writing process. However it was exciting, and had a lot of twists (not shocking really as even the authors could be sure what they would get). It kept me reading, and at times on the edge of my seat.

[Stefan Grieve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found Circ to be a very enjoyable, often thrilling and interesting novel that proves how well a collabrative novel can work.
A story written by several authors, it tells the story of a seaside town after the events of a murder.
The story is full of so many interesting well written characters, such as the fairy tale telling old man with the dark past, the eccentric artist, the violant gangster, the most interesting and complex clown since the Joker from Batman and the tragic Tim, who is involved in a damaged but delicatly written love story.
Each character is enjoyable to read on it's own and it is interesting to find how the characters connect to each in the story.
The story gets more and more thrilling with great twists and turns to the mystery and in the end I couldn't put it down until I had finished it.
As someone else you would often see at the seaside would say;
'That's the way to do it!'

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway.

Circ was an entertaining, incredibly twisted read. The unique blend of characters, along with their interwoven history and tangled pasts kept me entertained, however the far fetched, bizarre overall nature of the book caused me to feel mostly confused during my read.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting collaborative writing by Giselle Thompson ('Receiver of Stolen Words') et al.

Engaging, interesting and well written. A group of this size was always a risk working in collaboration, but they pulled it off completely.

I loved it ... a triumph of good writing, humour and application of craft.