I love getting lost in a great big epic. Maggie Shipstead's “Great Circle” has a truly grand story which contains many adventures and mysteries over a long period of time. It spans prohibition, WWII and brings us up to present day Hollywood. The novel also dynamically captures the complex, fascinating life of its fictional protagonist Marian Graves in a way that increasingly intrigues and reveals new layers. Born to a troubled privileged couple, she survives a dramatic tragedy when she's only a baby to then grow up alongside her twin brother in a humble home. We follow the rise and fall of her fortune, the many passionate and varied love affairs she has with men and women and her ambitious mission to fly around the world from pole to pole. Because through all the tumultuous events of history and the personal challenges she encounters in her life, Marian's true love is for flying and she endeavours to sail through the sky whenever she has the chance. Though this novel touches upon so many complex issues to do with gender, sexuality, abuse, different forms of marriage and alcoholism, Marian finds there's a rare liberation to be found in the air. It's so moving how this is a space and state of mind she continuously comes back to showing the true solace that accompanies a blissful kind of solitude.
The question of Marian's identity is explored in a compelling way through a duel storyline which follows a promising Hollywood starlet named Hadley Baxter as she is playing the role of Marian in a film about the aviator's final flight where Marian disappeared without a trace. Hadley's life superficially resembles that of the actress Kristen Stewart who was launched to fame in a teen fantasy franchise. It's enjoyable how Hadley learns details about Marian's life and the script dramatises her life in certain ways we know aren't true from reading the narrative thread that follows her actual development. This raises compelling questions about the nature of history and how we choose to interpret or distort facts to suit the narratives we want to form about the past. At the same time, as Hadley discovers there is so much more to Marian than she first believed she develops an even stronger spiritual connection with her as a figure that was maligned and misunderstood – much as Hadley herself is as a celebrity who has been used by the Hollywood system and whose public identity is manipulated to suit the story the public wants to believe. We see that there's never a single story about someone's life but many. Hadley reflects how “this is already like a game of telephone. There's Marian's real life, and then there's her book, and then there's your mom's book, and then there's this movie. And so on, and so on.” From both Marian and Hadley's tales, Shipstead shows the way narratives which are formed around the lives of particular individuals (especially women) diminish and limit how complex people really are.
Of course, this novel is quite melodramatic considering the high drama and scandal of so many of its storylines. But I don't see this as a negative thing because it's also so cleverly written and wonderfully indulgent I got completely swept up in its magnificent sweeping tale and enjoyed following the clues to learn the intricacies of its many hidden truths. It reminded me of luxuriously long novels such as “The Queen of the Night” and “The Eighth Life” where I got lost in the sheer pleasure of storytelling which is staged across significant events from history. It also structurally resembles the novel “Plain Bad Heroines” in its dual time lines which gradually reveal the true story behind a manufactured account of the past. I admire how novels such as these construct such enjoyably dramatic stories that also contain more meaningful and thoughtful elements. “Great Circle” is commendable for being an artfully constructed tale that is also utterly joyous.
