While even the best fantasy novels don't sound particularly convincing in precis ("and then the hobbit had to escape from a giant spider"), Morgenstern's strength evidently doesn't lie in her ability to construct a narrative.
The circus, created by magically manipulating a theatre impresario, serves as the duelling ground for the latest pair of students, Marco the orphan and Prospero's beautiful daughter, Celia, whose training includes regularly having her fingertips slashed in order to learn how to mend broken objects. Periodically, they like to set their respective students up in contests known portentously as "the game", though anyone hoping for a rulebook or score sheet will be disappointed. While Prospero believes magic is a matter of innate talent, Mr A H thinks it can be taught to anyone of reasonable intelligence. What few realise is that the circus is the result of a bizarre competition between two rival magicians, Prospero the Enchanter (also known as Hector Bowen) and Mr A H, a man of such formidable mystery that no one can quite remember his name. Once inside this monochromatic world, audiences might watch a tattooed contortionist fold herself into a tiny glass box, feast on chocolate mice and caramel popcorn, or wander through a sequence of tents that includes an ice garden, a desert and a maze constructed from towering clouds. It arrives without warning in fields around the world, opening its gates between the hours of dusk and dawn. At its centre is the appropriately named Le Cirque de Rêves, a dreamlike travelling circus in the latter part of a baggily imagined 19th century. The Night Circus is a strange beast, creakily plotted but boasting a fabulously intricate mise en scène. If fantasy novels rest on an ability to build rather than populate a world, they might just be in luck. Its die-cut cover, black-edged pages and intricate endpapers attest to the publisher's hopes that Erin Morgenstern's magically minded debut will secure the vast audience left bereft by the conclusion of the Harry Potter chronicles. I n terms of the book as object, this must be one of the most beautiful novels of the year.
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