What We're Reading: Cathy

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I hate circuses. This book however is lovely.

The Cirque des Reves (Circus of Dreams) arrives without warning. One morning you wake up and the empty field outside of town is filled with black and white tents.The circus is not one of clowns and elephants but of a real magic of the senses: sight, touch, smell. The author manages to create a world that touches ours but remains largely outside it. It takes place around the turn of the last century. Two magicians, Celia and Marco, have been trained from their childhoods to participate in a contest against each other (although neither knows at first who their opponent is and that the contest is to be to the death). The circus is created both for them and by them to be the setting for the contest. One tent is a world of ice, in another, the smells can transport you the Arabian desert, in the next you can watch "illusions" where birds appear out of nowhere and the performer disappears before your eyes. Yet another tent contains a vertical maze of clouds. A hitch in the contest plans appears after a while though. Celia and Marco fall in love. They must decide how to save the circus and its performers while putting an end to the contest.

You may want to become one of the Reveurs, put on your red scarf and follow this circus.