This book has been popping up in my peripheral vision for the last couple of months, in blogs and magazines. I hadn't stopped to read about it. I haven't had the time to read lately so I didn't pay attention. I think the third mention of it in a magazine intrigued me enough to go get a copy at my local library. By the first page I had already texted my sister telling her she absolutely had to get her hands on a copy of this book!
Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. Then I saw the publication date and was upset with myself for not reading it sooner. It's been around for 2 years and I only just now heard of it! I am seriously off my game.
The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
And the black sign painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, the one that reads:
Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn
-from the first page of The Night Circus
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
- Oscar Wilde, 1888
As soon as I read the opening sentence, I thought of Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes".
Two magical men, who have been alive for who knows how long, have agreed to embark on another contest. They each choose a child to train. These two children grow up to be Celia and Marco. They are to compete against each other in a duel of magic beneath the black and white tents of
Le Cirque des Reves.
The author
Erin Morgenstern surrounded by her
Reveurs (followers of The Night Circus).
