There is a clear before and after to the way the world works.

It also reminds us what an extreme watershed moment was WWII.

It is not only a chronicle of Marian’s life but a snap of how some people lived in the first half of the 20th century. She is ready to devote anything else to it.ĭuring her flight challenging the great circle Marian vanishes, so we know how the book ends, but the way Shipstead describes her life before that is fantastic. When she is twelve she falls in love with the idea of flying a plane, since then her whole life is organized around this one purpose. Marian like Hadley is also raised by an uncle and also has more freedom than we’d think wise now. We get to know her story before she is even born, understanding the unlikely match her sailor father and socialite mother were. Marian on the other hand is a fully-fledged complex personality. And it feels like her character is never fully developed, she is more a plot prop than a proper protagonist. She is shallow, seeking some sense and meaning in her life, extremely self-centered. She was orphaned as a baby, raised by an uncle whose lack of caring bordered on neglect, started her career early, and basically haphazardly careened through her life so far. To be honest Hadley’s story really didn’t resonate with me. The second one is set in 2015, where we meet a young Hollywood star Hadley Baxter at a point where she managed swiftly to end her career in a hyper-popular franchise. One is of Marian’s Graves life that led to her challenge to the title’s great circle in 1950.

The book really comprises two storylines. I still struggle with focusing on reading for longer periods of time hence it took me so long. I spent three full weeks immersed in Marian’s world. I got this book from my Bigger Half for Christmas and this time he put more time into the research, after the previous year’s failure with Shuggie Bain. Irrespective of its size it is a riveting story of the life of Marian Graves, a fictional pilot, and her attempt to fly around the world but choosing the route through the poles rather than the equatorial one. Understandable when you know the original manuscript was over 1000 pages.

At almost 600 pages I would call this book sprawling, but Maggie Shipstead jokingly calls it ‘slender wisp of a thing’.

Book review great circle