The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern, 2011
Fantasy PsychologyContemporary fictionRomance
A black-and-white circus arrives without warning and opens only at night; two young illusionists are bound into a contest neither fully understands. A slow, lyrical drift through wonder and longing, with a dramatic edge and the haze of memory.
Feels like wonder and longing. About memory.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy atmospheric fantasy, romance, and stories that move by mood rather than tight plot. Be aware that the opening includes a suicide note and puts a young child in danger.
Why read it
It offers a richly imagined world and a love story shaped by illusion and memory, a good escape when you want atmosphere over speed.
A page from the book
The strangest letter a magician receives is pinned to a five-year-old.
The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theater office, but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and it is also the first to arrive carefully pinned to the coat of a five-year-old girl. Erin Morgenstern.Erin Morgenstern wrote the first draft of The Night Circus during National Novel Writing Month, in a month-long November sprint.
Books that feel like this
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is The Night Circus for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy atmospheric fantasy, romance, and stories that move by mood rather than tight plot. Be aware that the opening includes a suicide note and puts a young child in danger.
- What is The Night Circus like?
- A slow, lyrical drift through wonder and longing, with a dramatic edge and the haze of memory. Feels like wonder and longing. About memory.
- What should I read after The Night Circus?
- If you liked The Night Circus, try The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V.E. Schwab), The Magician’s Nephew (C.S. Lewis) and La sombra del viento (Carlos Ruiz Zafón).
A taste of the feed
The difference between being remembered and being known.
Last night, she told him hers was Jess. She lied, but only because she can’t say her real name—one of the vicious little details tucked like nettles in the grass. Hidden barbs designed to sting. What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind? She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided—a memory, a photograph, a name.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue · V.E. Schwab
What a child asks for when there is nothing left to bargain with.
Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. ‘My son, my son,’ said Aslan. ‘I know. Grief is great.
The Magician’s Nephew · C.S. Lewis
A story that lets you in, versus one that tells you what to think.
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
The Lord of the Rings · J.R.R. Tolkien
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed