Reading Glasses - Fan Group discussion

Finished the whole book? Already read it previously? Ready to discuss it in it's entirety? This is the place for you!

This is your place to discuss the entire book, spoilers and all!

I really enjoyed this book!

The idea of a magical, mysterious traveling circus is a familiar one, but this did such a fantastic job of bringing it to life. I enjoyed this most for the huge variety of detail and thought that went into it -- so vivid and evocative.

For example, I loved the black-and-white color scheme to everything, and how they returned to it over and over and never neglected it... and then the red scarves came in, adding a new shock of color and a new distinct element. (The description of how, in the early hours of the morning, all that could be seen were shocks of red... speaking as a very fannish person, I found that really poignant!)

And the fact that the story keeps up such a strong pace and tension is really to its credit. I'd have a hard time explaining what The Night Circus's plot is in a way that really describes what it is your attention is on, chapter by chapter -- but it's constantly gripping, interesting, holding on to the reader. Less because of the plot, IMHO, and more because there are just so many interesting characters and situations, and I'm just really pleased to follow along with any of them.

For example, near the end, when Widget begs Bailey to join the Circus, and he misses them. It's hard to say what the "plot" of Bailey's arc is; for most of it, Bailey simply represents those who are captivated by the circus. But the moment the circus vanishes, the tension has already been set up so well. We know that the circus is unpredictable; we know how important it is that he find it, and we know how hard that's going to be. And then, in come the Red Scarves -- and those are perfectly set up as well...

There were things I felt were less strong as well. The "competition" arc between Celia and Marco, which is a major engine to the story, feels... disappointing, not living up to its promise (more on that in another post). I could have lived with some more attention to the romance -- both Celia+Marco and Bailey+Widget feel shmoopish and convenient (and Widget feels to me uncomfortably like a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who kind of gets awarded to Bailey, no questions asked).

But I don't want my criticism to eclipse the fact that this book was FUN and fresh and delightful. I enjoyed the heck out of this book, reading it in a single day (just a week ago). And then I found this group, and I'm pleased to be able to mull over the book a little more :D

So, as promised, I have Many Thoughts about the competition arc.


Most of them are, "well that doesn't actually make any sense, now does it."


Let's start from the conclusion -- where we actually discover what the competition is all about. There are basically two main revelations:

1. That this is a test of endurance, not of raw opposing power.

2. That the contest is between two opposing schools of thought -- one that does magic openly, disguised as mere illusion; another that hides itself, who works behind the scenes and whose influence is never discovered.


Let's start from the second: these two schools of thought sound cool, but in practice, within the book, I'm not seeing one lick of difference between them.


Is the Wishing Tree a different _kind_ of magic than the Ice Garden? Does Marcus achieve anything specifically by using manipulation and subtlety; does Cecily achieve anything specifically by dazzling the crowd? In point of fact, whenever the man in the gray suit intervenes, he's far more obvious and disruptive than Cecily's faded father ever is.


So the idea that this is a competition betwee two opposing worldviews seems absurd to me. There's no difference that I can tell. There's no difference that even the characters themselves claim. It's just... declared, with no justification, that the two characters represent vastly different things. As a competition, this feels senseless -- not just in being a bad idea, but simply in completely failing to "test" the thing it's supposed to.


The other revelation is that the competition is one of endurance. Well and good -- except it doesn't seem that either side has spent a whit of energy building endurance up. Quite the opposite - both sides are urged to use more and more magic, to create powerful effects, to _strain_ their ability to endure as much as possible.


Other parts of this also don't make sense. Why does the nature of the competition need to be secret? (It doesn't.) If it's a test of endurance, why does it need to suddenly be drawn to a head? (It doesn't.) If the contest's effects on others are what forces a solution, shouldn't some of the training  and guidance be about minimizing those effects? (Sure.) Why is a survival test, of two people the bettors care about, a good way to compete over a methodological difference that doesn't seem to have anything to do with endurance at all? (It probably isn't.)


Thr explanations the book gives sound cool and exciting in the moment. But I don't think they hold up to any consideration at all. That makes the whole competition a plot device, an engine for giving its characters something to do and a sense of tension, rather than something that actually has any inherent importance of its own.


That's a lot of words to express my frustration, so I'll just close with the same proviso: I enjoyed the book a lot, and this issue isn't a big deal. Plot is not a focus of "The Night Circus". At no point was I going "oh wow, I really hope Cecily wins!", or even "this contest is so mysterious; I can't wait to find out what its real rules are." It exists to serve a purpose, and it serves it well. It just sets down a few speed bumps in so doing :-P

I never thought about the competition in that way, as a device to force tension. It's true I never thought that the competition had much to do with how I felt about the book. I found that the characters on the outskirts of the competition were more compelling and more rounded then the ones actually involved.

I found the character of Bailey the most compelling, someone finding their way drawn into the crazy world of the circus almost as if he had no real power over himself. It was such a powerful thought that I seemed to forget that it was a by product of the competition itself.

I found that the characters on the outskirts of the competition were more compelling and more rounded then the ones actually involved.

I definitely agree with you here... The clockmaker stole my heart :)
And, I loved all the craftsmen and designers who assembled to put the circus together. They were interesting and vivid and distinct -- and I really appreciated that the book made real characters of them, giving them chapters sometimes, having them take the initiative.

I found the character of Bailey the most compelling, someone finding their way drawn into the crazy world of the circus almost as if he had no real power over himself.

That's a really intriguing observation!

In many ways, Bailey is kind of our "everyman" character, the reader's window and target for identification -- the character whose reactions are what the reader's might be (or "should" be...)

It's unusual, though, for the "everyman" character to be such a secondary thread -- very often, the "everyman" POV is used as a primary protagonist, to make the reader feel "at home" in the story at large. What Morgenstern does here instead has an interesting effect -- placing the reader firmly in the story, but as an observer much more than a central actor. That's... kind of cool.

And this also drives home to me how much "wonder at the circus" is the heart of this novel, rather than the magical-competition plot, because that's the experience that's central to the "reader-identification."

I didn't like it as much as I expected to, possibly because the book is very, very focused on creating an experience for the reader instead of provoking thought or emotion. it's like the author had a really intense dream and wanted to recreate it. Not that they did that badly, the atmosphere is heady and you can practically smell and taste everything. but it just seemed like an intoxicating dream, instead of an idea/story that burrows deep under your skin and changes the way you see things, which is what I love in a boom and was kind if expecting

I thought the book was well-written and unlike anything I've ever read before. I'd give it 4 stars, just because it is so unique.

However, I agree with previous comments that the whole challenge between two opponents plot didn't really work for me. As for the romance between March and Celia, what was there was nice, but that plot line also seemed weak to me. This leaves my experience of the circus, itself, as the best part of the book - and that was fantastic - truly different from anything else I've ever read.