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A review by salreads
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
5.0
‘Mankind lacks that sixth sense which seems to guide seabirds across thousands of miles of trackless ocean.’
Great Circle and I had a tempestuous love affair - at the height I was flying…but at other times I was tempted to bail out. Reading this with a group we shared frustrations and some decided this this wasn’t for them..
There is a dual storyline - Marian and Jamie are twins..their childhood was unconventional, they had to be independent, self reliant…. Marian is a pilot, Jamie is a vegetarian. Years into the future, Hadley a rising movie star has been hired to play Marian in a film…Marian’s plane disappeared in Antartica ..
Great Circle is expansive, ambitious with a huge cast, weaving into the fiction true stories from aviation history. The writing is brilliant - not surprising for a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop but at times I felt it was slightly self -conscious…and I found swift tense changes distracting. For me the biggest thing I wasn’t sure about was the dual timeline. I couldnt totally convince myself we needed Hadley and a movie framing the original story..At times the stories felt discordant and almost 2 different novels - Marian and Jamie’s story gave me Crawdads vibes whilst Hadley’s story reminded me of Evelyn Hugo. I was much happier in the first story..
But mostly this book was so utterly brilliant that I forgot my reservations and rushed for the five stars at its epic ending which gathers everything together so perfectly…It was as though the two stories had been circling around each other and suddenly I could see the view The characters are wonderfully drawn. Marian has much in common with Crawdads Kyra - self sufficient, resourceful, born into adult shoes, driven by an overwhelming desire to fly.. And then there’s Jamie. Jamie blew me away. I have never seen my thoughts and feelings articulated so closely in a character - there were many parallels between us in our relationship with animals. ‘..he must have conveyed his feelings about animals, the burden of his anguish for them.’ At some points this induced an anxiety in me that I have never experienced before - was Jamie going to die, was Jamie going to abandon his ideals? This felt personal.
Although for me this was sometimes a bumpy ride it was an epic journey and the view at the end was unbelievably wonderful.
Great Circle and I had a tempestuous love affair - at the height I was flying…but at other times I was tempted to bail out. Reading this with a group we shared frustrations and some decided this this wasn’t for them..
There is a dual storyline - Marian and Jamie are twins..their childhood was unconventional, they had to be independent, self reliant…. Marian is a pilot, Jamie is a vegetarian. Years into the future, Hadley a rising movie star has been hired to play Marian in a film…Marian’s plane disappeared in Antartica ..
Great Circle is expansive, ambitious with a huge cast, weaving into the fiction true stories from aviation history. The writing is brilliant - not surprising for a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop but at times I felt it was slightly self -conscious…and I found swift tense changes distracting. For me the biggest thing I wasn’t sure about was the dual timeline. I couldnt totally convince myself we needed Hadley and a movie framing the original story..At times the stories felt discordant and almost 2 different novels - Marian and Jamie’s story gave me Crawdads vibes whilst Hadley’s story reminded me of Evelyn Hugo. I was much happier in the first story..
But mostly this book was so utterly brilliant that I forgot my reservations and rushed for the five stars at its epic ending which gathers everything together so perfectly…It was as though the two stories had been circling around each other and suddenly I could see the view The characters are wonderfully drawn. Marian has much in common with Crawdads Kyra - self sufficient, resourceful, born into adult shoes, driven by an overwhelming desire to fly.. And then there’s Jamie. Jamie blew me away. I have never seen my thoughts and feelings articulated so closely in a character - there were many parallels between us in our relationship with animals. ‘..he must have conveyed his feelings about animals, the burden of his anguish for them.’ At some points this induced an anxiety in me that I have never experienced before - was Jamie going to die, was Jamie going to abandon his ideals? This felt personal.
Although for me this was sometimes a bumpy ride it was an epic journey and the view at the end was unbelievably wonderful.