Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
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An old-world circus that truly transports
What kind of circus is open only at night? With enough romance and mystique to fill a 19th Century Big Top, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus is as much an escape as the novel’s nocturnal Le Cirque des Rêves. Wherever the tents are set up — London, Rome or New York — Le Cirque attracts a cultish following. The Night Circus will entice the Harry Potter crowd with its inventive, YA-friendly cast; namely Celia and Marco, a pair of illusionists in love, and Celia’s father, Hector (AKA Prospero the Enchanter), who is already a legend before his untimely death. Adding to its charms, The Night Circus is narrated by Englishman Jim Dale, who lent his voice to the Potter series.
With traces of Dickens and Roald Dahl’s macabre, Celia and Marco are an attractive young duo who haven’t escaped childhood unscathed. As a girl, Celia’s father sliced her fingers and taught her to heal them with her mind. Marco, an orphan trained in telekinesis, is closely watched by a guardian and squired by girlfriend Isobel, a tarot reader. (She has thoughts of her own about Celia.) As Le Cirque des Rêves travels the globe, Marco and Celia encounter the realistic obstacles that come with love. The debut from Morgenstern — also a tarot card creator — is lushly descriptive, and full of more fantastical flights than a trapeze artist. Divided into diary-like vignettes, the reader gets a taste of an old-world circus
