Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - O Grande Círculo

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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shelfofunread'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? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

It’s not often that I’m prepared to identify a novel as being a personal ‘Book of the Year’ contender in July but I think I might make an exception for Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead’s epic novel.

For the last four weeks I have been utterly immersed in the life and times of pioneering aviatrix Marian Graves, following her from the fateful night in which her father – ship’s captain Addison Graves – opts to rescue Marian and her brother Jamie from the chilly waters of the Atlantic (and becomes a pariah in the process) to the equally fateful moment when a ‘sharp gannet plunge’ deep into the sea appears to mark the end of her effort to circumnavigate the globe from pole to pole.

Describing a book as dense and layered as Great Circle – which clocks in at 673 pages in its UK paperback form – is challenging, especially without giving spoilers. On the surface, this is a novel about a woman who wants to circumnavigate the globe and is presumed to have died trying. Marian’s fateful flight, however, doesn’t even begin until page 577. So, if this isn’t actually a novel about a woman flying a ‘great circle’, what is it?

The answer to that question is that Great Circle was, for me at least, many things.

In one sense, it really is a novel about a woman who wants to complete a ‘great circle’ around the globe. Marian’s fateful flight is the link holding the dual timelines of the novel together: the one thing that connects Marian to Hadley Baxter, the scandal-ridden starlet whose path to Hollywood redemption might be through playing Marian in a new biopic. In another sense, however, the novel is about circles more generally: specifically, the interconnecting circles of family, friends, lovers, histories, dreams, and possibilities that make up and intersect with a single life.

In an effort to understand Marian’s ‘great circle’, the reader must first meet her father and mother, and must understand their relationship to her father’s employer. We follow her brother Jamie, her childhood friend Caleb, and her uncle, Wallace. We see how Marian’s involvement with a bootlegger, Barclay Macqueen, has far-reaching consequences and how, like the planes she obsesses over, Marian’s life both soars and dives: into (and out of) marriage, into war, and, finally, into the unknown.

If all of that sounds baggy and voluminous, that’s because it is. But, for all its diversions and digressions, I don’t think one page of Great Circle is wasted. Indeed, as the novel progressed, I became wholly invested in the various layers and strands of the novel, and increasingly in awe of Shipstead’s ability to casually drop minor plot point or character from several hundred pages earlier back into the plot and blithely continue with the novel. By the time I reached the end of the book – and all the various dots had been connected – I felt as if I’d watched a quilt being made, each tiny scrap being gradually joined together until a finished object of immense beauty and togetherness emerged.

I’m aware that I’m gushing but I really did adore this novel. That said, I’m not saying it’s for everyone: some readers probably will find it too baggy or overly melodramatic. Others, I imagine, will find the frequent skipping of time, place, and narrator to be incoherent and disjointed. Still more might wonder what the point of Hadley’s narrative is. Certainly in the hands of a less competent writer, the sheer scope and scale of the novel has the potential to get dangerously out of hand.

For me, however, Shipstead has successfully combined a complex and ambitious narrative with vivid storytelling, memorable characters, and electric prose that leaps off the page. An epic in every sense of the word, I think I can say with confidence that Great Circle will be making an appearance on my Best Books of the Year list at the end of 2022.

NB: This review appears on my blog at https://theshelfofunreadbooks.wordpress.com. My thanks go to the publisher and to NetGalley UK for providing an e-copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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nialiversuch's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

nyne's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

sib_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective 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

3.0

Content Warnings

isabelgalupo's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.75

A really gorgeous, sweeping book about ambition, illusion, and fated connections. Bonus points for depicting complicated women without judgment and

a steamy bisexual love triangle set in the past

. This is my favorite type of novel, one that spans many decades and weaves together plots and destinies. Only knocking it down .25 because I wanted a smidge more closure surrounding Harley’s story.

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