A review by jessicafarmer80
The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy by Stewart O'Nan, Alice van Straalen

2.0

I don’t like leaving less than stellar reviews - but gosh I struggled with this one. The beginning seemed a bit all over the place…but the hardest part for me was the number of people/names mentioned and flipping back and forth between them. I couldn’t remember who was who for the life of me. I’m sure the author knew them intimately with the amount of research that went into this book, but to the average reader I don’t know who could keep up (& I never have a problem with that). I learned a lot about this sad and horrible event, as I had never heard of it. It’s awful there are a lot of things left unanswered and there was no closure regarding who set the fire or how it started and the several unidentified bodies.