Mysterious, enchanting, romantic and beautifully written, The Night Circus stole my heart.“The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theater office, but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and it is also the first to arrive carefully pinned to the coat of a five-year-old girl.” The little girl is Prospero’s daughter, and he soon discovers she has inherited his magical powers. In no time he has made a wager with a rival, the "man in the grey suit”, on a contest between his daughter and a student of his rival’s choosing. The two students spend their childhoods training and honing their skills for the challenge, whose rules are clear to neither of them, and their adulthoods in the mesmerizing dance into which their growing attraction to one another turns the contest. The Night Circus is created as the venue for the contest and continues to morph and become more and more amazing as the two compete and sometimes collaborate to create new magical attractions. The reader travels to many different locations and back and forth in time as the circus moves around the globe in an unpredictable manner and events are viewed from the perspective of more than one character. Every character in this lovely novel is interesting, perhaps none more than the Night Circus itself, which Celia describes as “a wonder and a comfort and a mystery all together.” This portrayal of the circus aptly describes the book, which has been optioned as a movie. I only hope the moviemakers do it justice!
