Unexpectedly, the reader comes to know the characters more deeply in these in-between moments than during the moments of great anguish and joy. Instead, the reader is treated to descriptions of the escapism of flight, to weed-fueled monologues and mundane dinner parties. Time isn’t spent exploring Hadley’s life before her Hollywood downfall. The novel doesn’t dwell, for example, on Marian’s reactions to the death of her loved ones. The author emphasizes the expanse of human experience by focusing on the little, seemingly innocuous details of the women’s lives. I look forward, and there is the horizon. “The world unfurls and unfurls, and there is always more,” Marian writes. Yet, at the same time, the women are remarkably similar: Both are orphans who were raised by dissolute uncles, both operate in worlds dominated by oppressive men who are ready to burn them as witches, and both are marked with an irrepressible desire to find a purpose that always seems to elude their efforts.īut, even as I write this, these hardly seem like sufficient descriptions of the two women, and I have to return to the question I began with: Is it possible to describe them? “Great Circle” revolves around this idea and how people and grand events are their own self-contained infinities. In contrast, Hadley was raised in the spotlight of Hollywood, her young adult life defined by her leading role in a popular YA film series until a scandal threatened to topple her into obscurity. Marian grew up in squalor in Montana, able to pursue her passion for flying planes only because of an amorous - and abusive - patron and bootlegger named Barclay Macqueen. The differences between the women are chasmic. This book, with its heft rivaled only by its depth, follows two parallel narratives: One is that of Marian Graves, a fictional Earhart-esque pilot who disappeared over the Arctic in the 1950s the other, set in modern-day, is that of Hadley Baxter, a disgraced actress trying to salvage her career by starring in a biopic about Marian. Paradoxically, I’ve only come to realize this while trying to write a review of Maggie Shipstead’s “Great Circle,” shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. Is it even possible to write a book review? Or, a review of anything, for that matter? As a writer for The Michigan Daily, I review books regularly, so this was a troubling question to ponder, but the impossibility of distilling anything into a review has become increasingly clear.

Great circle maggie