“Great Circle” by Maggie Shipstead – Carving the Unwalked Path

 

Maggie Shipstead has waited a few years between her second book and her latest release, Great Circle, taking the time to craft an epic and humorous story centred on two women separated by decades. 

The first is a daredevil whose plane mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the twentieth century, and the second one is an actress hired to portray the first woman many years later.

Maggie Shipstead Prepares a Journey of Discovery

The gift of flight was given to us by the Wright brothers only at the start of the twentieth century, and we've been hard at work since then, incessantly taking ourselves to greater heights. The pioneering aviators of the twentieth century have always had a mystique and charm about them, especially the ones who disappeared without a trace, as does Marian Graves in Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.

The first of the two narratives followed in the book is Marian's, taking us to the start and through the middle of the twentieth century. After a chance encounter with some barnstorming pilots, she develops a lifelong love affair with flight with all the incredible sensations and mysteries it has in store for her.

After dropping out of school at fourteen and finding a wealthy bootlegger who subsidizes her expeditions, she trudges onward and carves a unique path for herself, essentially becoming a daredevil in her own right. One day, she sets out to accomplish her dream: a round trip around the Earth while flying over the North and South poles. It marks the last time anyone saw her.

Almost a century after Marian's disappearance, we are presented with the second narrative of the book, the one following Hadley, an eager Hollywood starlet doing her best to redefine herself in a cruel and unforgiving industry. She gets the chance she's looking for when she is hired to play Marian in a film centring on her disappearance.

Slowly but surely, Hadley becomes increasingly immersed in the life of the woman she is asked to portray, uncovering more and more information about her surprising life. She comes to see her not only as the subject of her work, but someone whose history and fate she has collided with, changing the fabric of her own life as a result.

The Love for the Past in Great Circle

While there are indeed two alternating narratives in the book which, at a cursory glance, are roughly equivalent to each other in terms of length, I would say the first one, following Marian Graves, to be of greater overall importance. My reasoning is quite simple: the second narrative is, in large part, connected to and based on what happens in the first one.

Marian's story really captured my attention from the very beginning, with Maggie Shipstead's smooth and descriptive prose making it incredibly easy to become immersed in the world of just over a century ago. She takes her time to describe the setting, the people in it, their clothes, idiosyncrasies, and everything which comes with the territory.

Indeed, the pace of the book is a bit slower than what the avalanche of modern thrillers has gotten us accustomed to, and personally-speaking, it felt like a breath of fresh air. I felt not only allowed, but encouraged to take my time while reading, with the focus being placed mostly on character development instead of advancing the plot.

Speaking of the characters, Shipstead does an excellent job at making them believable, in the sense that I easily bought the idea of them being part of the world, with their own lives and problems to deal with outside of the main story. None of them feel like fixtures simply inserted for the author's convenience, which coincidentally, makes them a lot easier to remember and keep track of.

As we witness Marian carving up her path of independence, we're treated to a number of humorous situations and satirical observations about the course human history has taken. They're all quite intelligent, carefully-inserted, and perhaps most importantly, they don't saturate one page after the next; Shipstead is strategic in the use of her comedic chops.

The Hollywood Grinder

While Marian's plot feels fairly romantic in its nature, a globetrotting affair with bootleggers, hunters, bush pilots, star-crossed lovers and artists, taking us from prohibition-era Montana to German prisoner-of-war camps from the Second World War, the second narrative following Hadley switches things up a bit.

Rather than being an adventurous romp through the past, it feels a bit more like a mystery, with Hadley consistently learning more and more about Marian. Thankfully, she learns quite a lot of information we're not privy to when following Marian ourselves, making this part of the book more than just a repeat of the past.

Not being an actor (or actress, for that matter), I can't personally comment on the veracity of Shipstead's portrayal of the Hollywood industry and Hadley's line of work, but it all felt very realistic and extremely well-researched. Without bombarding us with technical terms and cinema jargon, the author manages to depict this world very clearly and concisely.

Hadley isn't just a vehicle for us to explore someone else's biography though; a second storyline wouldn't be necessary for this. She is also someone who is struggling with finding her place in the world, and the more she learns about the woman she must portray on the silver screen, the deeper her understanding of her own self grows.

The way in which the two stories end up crossing paths, despite being decades removed from each other, is endearing, inspiring and surprising all at the same time. There are also some additional twists and surprises along the way before the final reveal, making sure we never really run out of things to anxiously anticipate.

The Final Verdict

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead is a fantastic satire novel, telling two adventurous stories (in their own ways) across a little more than a century through a masterful prose, bringing to life memorable characters and imparting observations both funny and thought-provoking.

If you're looking for a humour novel which takes things a little more slowly and has a truly meaningful story to tell beyond the comedic moments, then I believe you'll have a fantastic time with this book.

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Maggie Shipstead Personal site Maggie Shipstead is an American novelist who began her published career in 2012 with Seating Arrangements, which won her the Dylan Thomas Prize as well as the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. She followed by publishing Astonish Me two years later in 2014, and recently she came out with her third novel, titled Great Circle.