Reading: The Night Circus (218/365)

I bought a copy of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus in 2012, not that long after it was published, but never got round to reading it, and it lurked among the (many) unread books on my Kindle until the other week, when I was trying to decide on something to read and thought I'd see what the oldest unread books I had were.

The Night Circus is a gorgeous, slow-moving fantasy, playing out over the course of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It's the story of the titular circus - a wonderful, magical place, designed entirely in stark black and white, which only opens between dawn and dusk - and of the people who are intimately connected with it, especially Celia and Marco, who were dedicated in childhood to a magical contest whose stage is the circus. The narrative shifts between viewpoints, with two intersecting storylines - the long history of the circus, and a second strand following Bailey, a boy who falls in love with the circus - and descriptions of the circus which put the reader in the place of a visitor. I found it utterly delightful; richly detailed and slow-moving and beautiful.