Reviews with content warning for Violence - O Grande Círculo

I kept catching myself wanting a movie of this book, even though I know book-movies are often disappointing, and indeed the book itself shows how much movies can miss. But this book is so visually beautiful, a delight for the mind's eye that draws from perspective characters' longings and aesthetic sensibilities to set its scenes. Though it is a long book, I never felt weighed down—when the plot doesn't move forward, the characters do, and this book is much about people's relationships to themselves and each other as it is about Graves attempting her "great circle." I liked the meditations on disappearance and death, on people's purpose in life and the interactions of chance and fate. This book has so much life in it, so much energy and realness and joy. And yet it also explores the legendary, and there is a pervading larger-than-life feeling even as we read about Marian's day-to-day life. It will be a while before I finish processing this one, because the questions it asks are woven so neatly into the story itself, but they're there. I guess, bottom-line, if you find yourself spending too long reading the Wikipedia articles of celebrities, this book might be for you.

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thebakerbookworm's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

I didn't hate this book, I didn't love this book, it was very much a middle-of-the-road kind of book. I'm glad I read it, and I enjoyed parts of it. But I do think it was too long, and that made it hard to get through. I struggled with the audiobook too—it was hard to remember characters and dates, especially at the beginning, because there was a lot of back and forth between timelines and perspectives.

Anyway, things I liked include:
- Marian, of course, who gets some stellar development over the course of the story
- Jamie, the sweetest animal-loving vegetarian artist who I just wanted to hug
- all of the aviation stuff—learned a lot about planes
- the second half of the book
- older, Hawaii-living Caleb
- that the ending managed to surprise me, and it wasn't the kind of bittersweet/depressing/thought-provoking ending you'd expect from this kind of book. It was still thought-provoking, but in a different way that I liked and found more powerful

Things I didn't like:
- the first half of the book (and basically everything with Barclay McQueen...)
- most of Hadley's story...some of it was interesting but overall I was much more interested in Marian's story and wanted to stay in her storyline
- a lot of the relationships were doomed because of self-sabotage by the characters basically...I can only handle so much self-sabotage
- the length of this book

Basically I think I would've enjoyed this book a lot more if the beginning was pared down a lot, if it was just about Marian with no present-day timeline, and if I had read the physical book. I'm still glad I read it! But it's a hard one to recommend to people because of the length. Lots of people have loved it though, and there are some rave reviews out there. So read it if you want, and then let me know what you thought of it :)

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