Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Great Circle

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Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

19 reviews

nickibreading's review against another edition

adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I LOVED THIS BOOK. Truly a gripping read, everytime the POV altered that character became my favorite again except for Hadley at the end because Marian was just soooo exciting). Even when the characters are making bad decisions, I’m still right there with them.

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jodar's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Well-written and strangely absorbing, but what an odd mix of themes: semi-orphans abandoned to an incapable uncle; a frontier-like childhood; a nasty marriage with liquor-running adventures; wilderness solitude (more than once); a war story; a movie star; an adventure story of long-distance flight.

Scarcely an admirable character appears at all, except perhaps for secondary and tertiary characters. How to think of the MC, her twin brother and closest childhood-then-adult friend? Introverted, certainly, but none to me are attractive. All have their own obsessions (flying, art, wilderness) and seem to care only about their own selfish needs.

There’s sexual promiscuity by the main characters throughout, with barely any consideration for consequences to others. Steps to avoid pregnancy are detailed, but non-historical is the lack of any concern for venereal disease at a time of horrible and inadequate treatment. This ignorance doesn’t even make sense while the characters are young and isolated from society, as the prostitutes the MC befriends would surely be knowledgeable. It’s anachronistic behaviour till after the 1950s–1960s at least, when effective treatments became available and the ‘sexual revolution’ began to take off. The trope of non-heterosexual relationships as some sort of forbidden and secret enlightenment arises, of course; it’s seemingly unavoidable these days.

From time to time throughout the MC’s life and for sure at the end, the futility of existence and a resigned nihilism comes to the fore:

All the times she [the MC] has brushed against death, she’s never given much thought to what might come after. Now she considers it. She supposes there will be nothing. She supposes each of us destroys the world. We close our eyes and snuff out all that has existed, all that will ever be. (Final chapter, “The End”)

This is the malignancy that American individualism and its preoccupation with freedom looks like, I suppose, when it is untempered by a wider Christian concern towards others in society or a belief in the ultimate importance of our actions. I doubt this is what the author intends the reader to come away with, however.

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ell_n's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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janelleaimi's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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swaanderer's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

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vikkom's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

This piece of fiction HITS on so many levels once it's finished. Judging by my engagement at the start I was definitely not expecting how many moments throughout that I would read a sentence and just sit there and stare and ponder, or bookmark to write down once I get up after keeping on reading.

I thought this book was going to be about this random lady Marian Graves attempting a north-south circumnavigation, and the fictional actress Hadley being fascinated and throwing herself into the history of Marian in preparation for the role. The book is about that, but I'd say that it's only about 10% that.

The rest of the book is about Marian Graves, and the people she loved and loved her, from before birth, to death; it is about Hadley, the starlet, and her journey with the pressures of hollywood, acting, falling in lust, and being... drawn to Marian and also knowing and feeling uncomfortable with the fact that the Marian she is playing is almost entirely reconstructed.

This book paints the sweeping arc of Marian's life, and the lives of the people that were most important to her. It deals with feeling multiple, contradictory feelings at once; it deals with estrangement from people you love; it deals with loving people and yet hating them; it deals with queer love in the 40s and 50s; it deals with the what-could-have-beens while acknowledging that sequences of events have a certain inevitability and circularity; and overall, it deals with the messy and complex and less-than-idyllic ways that humans connect. Lives are lived, opportunities are lost. People die. We go on.

N.B. one thing I would say though, is that it took me over half of the book (no small feat, it's a solid 300 pages) to actually get *into* the story. I think mainly because I wasn't expecting a grand sweeping whole-of-life tale, but the book comes around in a nice circle, once I realised that was what it was.

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