Erin Morgenstern

Zachary Ezra Rollins finds a mysterious, uncataloged book in the library at his university. He starts to read it and… it’s about him. A story he never told anyone about finding a painted door in an alley when he was a kid but chickening out of opening it. He promised himself he would open the door if he ever saw it again, and so he does some sleuthing to track down the origin of this mysterious book. He ends up in a story much larger than he could have imagined, involving libraries and books and secret societies and bees and keys and swords.

Like with The Night Circus, I did not always understand what was going on here even as I very much enjoyed reading it. The first third of the book is fairly grounded, as Zachary digs around in the real world and even as he’s exploring the library for the first time. But once he starts traveling to other places and through time inside the library I got pretty lost. We do get snippets of another grounded POV later on in the story, which I appreciated. A very enjoyable book to spend time in but too metaphorical to be a favorite.… (more)

This book would be a better suited as a movie than a book. I say this because there are over a dozen characters woven in and out of the plot, some of whom appear out of nowhere and you wonder if you missed something in previous chapters. The book FINALLY gets some action about 75% of the way through, which finally made me decide to finish the damn thing. The imagery is comparable to the movie "What Dreams May Come," which is why I said I think the is better suited to be re-written as a screenplay than a book. From what I've learned from friends and other reviewers, either you love it or you hate it. You'll remember the images, but you'll forget the plot and the characters. It has more holes than Swiss cheese, which isn't saying much. Honestly, save your time for something else and wait for the movie.… (more)

Sometimes I want chocolate. And sometimes I want the chocolate experience. I'm as guilty as the next person of the occasional vending machine pick-up for when I need those quick fixes. But then there's the slow anticipation. Take last week, for instance. It had been a few days since the last time. As I waited in line for my latte, my eyes happened to linger on a cute little cupcake, dark velvety goodness. Short, stacked, with a swirl of fluffy milk chocolate frosting. I resisted temptation, but the thought of chocolate lingered in my mind, and it was only a day or two before I found myself heading to my favorite chocolatier, craving the bittersweetness of an espresso-infused truffle. The overwhelming rich smell of cocoa as I opened the door. The charming smile of the clerk. The snap as my teeth bit through the dark chocolate coating, and the coffee-flavored richness of the silky ganache coating my tongue.

[b:The Night Circus|9361589|The Night Circus|Erin Morgenstern|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387124618l/9361589._SY75_.jpg|14245059] is achingly beautiful. I'll concur with the critics that it might not have much of a plot, but sometimes the point is the storytelling. Morgenstern's writing reminds me of [b:In the Night Garden|202769|In the Night Garden (The Orphan's Tales, #1)|Catherynne M. Valente|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320548374l/202769._SX50_.jpg|196179] in it's deceptively simple storytelling, of [a:Peter S. Beagle|1067608|Peter S. Beagle|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1360970921p2/1067608.jpg]'s melancholic and star-crossed lovers, and of [a:Steven Millhauser|12589|Steven Millhauser|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243408184p2/12589.jpg]'s love of ornate visual details in a magical environment. It's lyrical and evocative. If you want hair-trigger, gun-slinging action, this is not the book for you. If you look for slow, winding beauty, the walk in the sun-filled garden and the sparkle of sunlight off ice-covered trees, this might be your book.

Cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/the-night-circus/… (more)

One of the hottest fiction releases of 2011 was Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. I read some articles about it last year in The New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly about how it received a huge marketing push, Morgenstern was well compensated for a first book, and the movie rights were already sold to create a huge franchise. “This could be the next Harry Potter!” I was told.

But it’s not.

The Night Circus‘s great appeal is in its visual storytelling. Even the book covers of its various editions are impeccable and represent Morgenstern’s talent for striking descriptions. Just about every chapter includes a clear image of either someone’s clothing, a dessert, or the entertainments of the night circus. Some combination of fabric, chocolate, and magical flame will take hold of your imagination, and I am sure these images will make for a grand movie spectacle, as well.

The magic is also easy to picture: Morgenstern’s magicians use illusions without bringing the reader too far behind the curtain to know how everything works. If a character heals cuts on her fingers with telepathy, then that is all the reader needs to know and Morgenstern is happy to omit any Latin spellcasting or bejeweled wands. I enjoyed letting the magicians wield automatic, mysterious magic. How they use the magic says more about their character than the existence of magic, anyway.

About halfway through the book, however, I started to lose touch with the cast. Maybe Morgenstern’s narrative jumped forward and backward through time too often. Maybe I’d had enough of the Starbucksian descriptions in which everything involves vanilla, chocolate, ice, cinnamon, clover, or some other fancy coffee ingredient. One thing is for certain: the dry characters had lost their appeal. Even by the time a romance entered the story, neither love interest felt compelling enough to care about. There’s a scene described as, “there was a boisterous mood in the room.” Thanks for the info! And thanks for every character trying to out-dandy everyone else. I loved reading about the Victorian-Romantic manners and outfits (this book could spark its own convention of cosplayers and merchandisers), but after a certain point the book’s world feels like a dinner theater where the murderer is just a member of the audience and nothing is really at stake. Insert joke about corsets.

A large chunk of the book serves as an epilogue for other characters who were not fleshed out nearly enough for the treatment they were given, unless a sequel revisits everyone. Imagine if Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ended with 70 pages explaining how Neville Longbottom became class president and made up his own business cards.

But then, that’s the difference between Morgenstern and Rowling. One put us in the head of a boy in a magical world. The other just led a tour of a castle.… (more)