Reflections: The Night Circus

The Night Circus is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. I was drawn to it because of the magical and mysterious synopsis. I was quite curious and excited to delve into some magic (or magical realism), but I am left confused (confusion being my predominant state of mind these days).

Prospero, the famous illusionist and a mysterious man in a grey suit arrange for a Game. A game of magical prowess and endurance. A game that has been played for centuries. A game wherein each of them pit their students against each other like pawns in a board game. But this time, Prospero selects his own daughter, Celia, as a contestant in the magical and grueling game. The bewitching and talented Celia has no idea what she (and her contestant) are in for. And then, as if the stars had always charted this out, the Night Circus comes into being. It’s the most enchanting Circus the world has ever seen. It opens at midnight and closes at dawn. It has limitless breadth and depth within its tents, making people wonder at the limits of possibility. While the audiences imagine the Circus to be brimming with unusually brilliant illusion and magic tricks, only those inside of it know how their lives have changed forever, suspended in a magical bubble that can burst at any time. They too, are now smaller pawns in the Game that unfolds itself inside the tents. What is this Game, what is to come of the Circus and its eclectic and mysterious stakeholders? Only time will tell. Time is the only thing that even Magic cannot truly escape? Isn’t it?

Have you made you a tad bit curious? No? Oh, well. Then this book is surely not for you! I want to keep most of the elements of the story under wraps as much as possible, for the mystery drives the first half of the book forward. I will just say that this book is not a magical replica of the Hunger Games! Yes, there is a similar game, but no, they are not alike in any other way.

The prose is gorgeous! Oh so luscious and enticing! It almost hypnotizes the reader with vivid imagery. That’s the best part of the book; the element which kept me hooked. The prose beautifully recreates every scene, every sensation, every visual perception in the mind’s eye. This is a delightful treat, especially to those who like fantasy and magic. Real magic! Managing this visual delight through words is a feat. Combined with this visual delight and the mysterious beginning, the book built up a grand expectation of what was to come. But, anti-climatically, the story itself fizzled out in about 2/3rds of the way. It was such a let down. Was there character development? Some yes, but not much.

The author tries to be very mysterious of everything, but in the end, you realize there wasn’t really much of a mystery. And those things that were really enigmatic (like the spells and charms) remain an enigma. There were no complex plots, nothing that intriguing or elaborate to warrant such a hefty premise. The ending seemed amateurish to me. It doesn’t befit the first half of the book. And truth be told, I don’t really understand the point of the story. Yes, not all stories on magic need to be allegorical and loaded with symbolism, but I felt the author was trying to put across a statement, but it never came through. It seemed like she was attempting to mix the metaphysical with the physical in some philosophical sense. Free-will in the context of controlling the elements and foreseeing the future? Was she trying to say that Magic is real and possible, but people just choose to ignore it and resist it because it requires self-awareness and uncomfortable control and confrontations within the mind? That Magic can be taught? Or that the boundary between reality and fantasy/magic is too thin and subject to perception and interpretation? Or that it’s not necessary for every story to have a meaning, a structure, a point to convey?

So, yes, the story itself fell flat for me. But, I loved the atmosphere that is created in the book. I soaked and savored the words as my mind’s eye feasted on the grandeur and deceptive simplicity of the beguiling Circus. And oh, there is also some fairy-tale romance that sparks up the atmosphere. And I’m a sucker for that  as well. But then again, can a book be truly enjoyed solely for such sensory/sensual experiences?

You see why I’m confused. I don’t know how to rate this book. So, I’m not going to. It is surely a very interesting and captivating book that your senses will revel in, but your intellect will scoff at. There is so much momentum in the first part of the book, but the story huffs and puffs and falls short in the end. Or, as is always the possibility, I just missed something! But I will surely remember this book for a long time! It has bewitched a portion of my brain. That's the spell this book casts, despite the lack of a strong story.

Someone compared this to Harry Potter apparently. Ha! No, this is nothing like Harry Potter. But, if Rowling and Erin Morgenstern were to team up, I’m confident that the result will be nothing short of magical!

If you’ve read this book, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Reflections: The Phantom of the Opera

I’ve only been to two musicals in all my life. There are several I wish to see someday, and The Phantom of the Opera is surely one of them. I was never curious to read the book until I chanced upon it and I decided to read it on a whim. After all, a popular musical would be well worth reading as a book, right? Absolutely, yes. I can perfectly understand how this can be a powerful and mesmerizing musical, and I can’t wait to see it someday.

The story is about the mysterious Opera ghost who seems to haunt the walls of the Paris Opera House, wreaking havoc among the managers, the audience and the opera performers with his supposed witch-crafts and threats. The disruptive activities of the phantom come to the glaring spotlight when the alluring singer, Christine Dae gets entangled in his tentacles. The phantom calls himself the Angel of Music, and helps Christine with her singing lessons. Surely, the phantom is ingeniously talented in music and has the rapturous voice of an angel. But the rest of him is shrouded in a dark, deathly shadow. The story is about dissecting who the phantom is, if he really does exist, and how the poor, innocent singer is rescued from his grips.

The book has a lot of elements running through it - mystery, suspense, romance, and a Gothic flavor that heightens the tension and tragedy. I have realized that books which capture all of these elements leave the most impact on me. Plus, books that deal with an interesting plot surrounding an intense character keep me totally consumed and engrossed. I love intense, over-the-edge kind of plots based on the human psyche - it both fascinates and horrifies me. It’s perfect to sink into the story and analyze one single character who portrays the most devious and brilliant mind.

It’s a pity I can’t ramble on about anything else, for I will be spilling the mystery and spoil the book for those who want to read and learn things by themselves. But the book touched me. I thought it was brilliant that the author came up with such a haunting psychological thriller surrounding a conventional Opera house. It leaves you wondering who the real victims in the book are, and indeed how shallow our perceptions of physical appearances really are.

Reflections: Finding Nouf

Nouf, a sixteen year old girl hailing from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, mysteriously disappears three days before her wedding. Clues suggest that the girl was either kidnapped or she ran away to the desert. The family banks on Nayir, their trustworthy desert guide to find Nouf. Nayir combs the desert with his search and rescue team for two weeks, but to no avail. It is impossible for anyone to survive in the desert for this long a time, especially so for a young, wealthy girl, who’s been cocooned from the harsh realities of the world. When Nouf’s body is found, Nayir’s obsession with the mysteries surrounding Nouf’s case deepens. In a land where women are veiled mysteries, and families regard their honor to be higher than the truth, Nayir wades his way through uncomfortable revelations about his beliefs and tradition as he pieces together the truth about Nouf.

Zoe Ferraris has woven an engaging mystery in the heart of one of the most mystic lands. Through the detective plot, she brings alive the culture and traditions of wealthy Arabian families. I thought it was quite creative of her to employ a prudish, conventionally strict musilm man, Nayir, as the detective who discovers that he needs to understand the secretive world of Arab women, if he wants to crack Nouf’s case. Through Nayir, she shows the reader the perspective of a muslim man, the reasons for his prejudices, and the lens through which he views women. Through the course of the novel, as Nayir gets closer to the truth about Nouf, he also leaps closer to understanding why Nouf’s life had to take such a course. In other words, he transforms from an ignorant man to one who understands the world of women; their feelings, their thoughts, their ambitions, and their silent sufferings. His revelations make him reflect on his beliefs and traditions, which, contrary to his supposition, seemed to sometimes cause suffering and moral depravity. Ferraris manages to cleverly balance the wisdom contained in the Quran and the havoc it wreaks when misinterpreted with a cloistered perspective in the modern era. I appreciated the fact that she didn’t go overboard in criticizing the culture - as a matter of fact, she doesn’t really criticize. She merely presents the honest repercussions and suggests embracing rules and traditions, without losing sight of their deeper underlying principles. And it’s brilliant that she conveys all of this through the thoughts of the stringent Muslim man, Nayir.

I laud this book for its creative attempt at ensconcing such deeper discussions on the Arabian culture and traditions within an engrossing mystery. The more the mystery gets unraveled, the more we grasp the complexity of the culture. On a certain level, the mystery is just secondary to the story, and I even had some quibbles with it, but it establishes a deeper connection with the reader to young girls like Nouf. Nayir’s gradual widening of his mind and heart is also realistically portrayed.

In terms of writing, many reviews have generously praised Ferraris’s prose, but it didn’t really sweep me off my feet. It was crisp and vivid, and packages the story well.

If you’re looking for a book that is both engaging and thought provoking, this book will fit the bill perfectly.

Reflections: The Lovely Bones

A fourteen year old girl Susie Salmon gets raped and murdered in a cornfield near her house. The dead girl watches over her family, friends and her killer from Heaven and narrates this tale. No doubt the content is dark and weighs heavy, but the book tells a very moving tale of a young girl's hopes and angst, and her family's tumultuous journey of coping with their loss.

The characters have been shaped with a lot of depth and reality. I have never before been scared of a character from a book - but despite hardly any gore or graphic descriptions of the violence or of the killer, Sebold brings out spine chills every time the killer is mentioned. Movies have their way of conveying this same fear through the actor's visual manifestation of the violence and psychotic instincts, but for a book to bring out that same impact with such subtle teasing of the killer's disturbed state, is pretty commendable. The killer really disturbed me, and that's not much of a surprise. But my recommendation would be to not sit through the book in the dead of the night :)

Quite a few paranormal phenomena have been integrated into the story, some of which I felt could have been done without. Some parts reminded me of "Sixth Sense" and the TV show "Ghost Whisperer"... both of which deal with the concept that the dead who were abruptly cut off from their life on Earth, linger on to avenge their death or communicate something to their loved ones. I'm obviously quite skeptical (and scared) of such phenomena and I avoid thinking about them. Since this is a work of fiction, I'm not dissecting these aspects. However with Sebold's poetic prose, one can imagine many metaphoric levels to these phenomena... spirits can be equated to memories of loved ones, etc... and that's what I tried to do. Despite bringing in such phenomena, the book doesn't turn into a scary/grim "ghost" thriller. The first half of the book has a tinge of humour to it, making the whole narration very interesting and creative. The middle of the book gets intense as the killer's life gets traced, and Susie's family falls apart with the pain of her death. Despite the killer being introduced within the very first pages of the book, the crux of the suspense is how the police/detectives and Susie's family track down the killer. Somewhere down the line, I vehemently awaited justice on behalf of so many young girls who have suffered a similar fate in reality. My main quibble is that I didn't find enough closure from the ending - I was expecting a climax, but it seemed to fizzle out with an induced paranormal phenomenon. It thwarted the momentum and flow of the book for me.

The family's grief and helplessness are quite moving, and Sebold's writing beautifully captures it all. I loved her lyrical prose. Her writing wrings out every subtle emotion from each of the characters. It doesn't do justice to gulp down her prose... the words hold a lot of insight and they are very creatively expressed, leaving a haunting and profound impact on life, death, acceptance and moving on.