This novel-in-stories (linked stories, short story cycle) is right up my “Clown Alley” and keeps good genre company with Anderson’s WINESBURG, OHIO O’Brien’s THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, Houston's COWBOYS ARE MY WEAKNESS, Alexie’s THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN, Cisneros’s THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET, not to mention recent Pulitzer Prize winners, Jennifer Egan for A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD and Elizabeth Strout for OLIVE KITTERIDGE. While most linked stories pivot around a central character, Day easily juggles generations of circus people. She creates a balanced act of chapters in multi-faceted forms (letters, newspaper clippings, lists, chapters within chapters, photographs) that all build to a poignant, final act. Day is a damn good storyteller; she draws you in like a spin artist, each story defying you to look away. These stories are often gut-wrenching, profound; after all, it is the circus in winter. Every character has a longing that echoes, and I found myself wanting to pause, to give them their due before turning the page to meet the next act. What trembles within the pages are the stories behind the curtain, the winter that lives within the summer, the urge to escape against the obligation to stay. But don’t worry--it’s not all gloom and Indiana winters--there’s redemption, honor, remembrances, and beauty (in the people and the prose). Day’s work is not just compelling in its storytelling, but also in the ways in which her stories contemplate narrative--what is known, what is unknown, what gets told, what gets folded between the pages of time, in books on the shelf, within the secret heart of people and their longings to leave. In an early chapter, Day tells three versions of one story, a recurring theme in the book, but I particularly held on to these lines: “The truth ain’t nothing but a lie that folks learn to live with.” And “Sometimes the truth don’t set you free, honey. Sometimes it’s the very worst thing.” Each of Day’s characters, at one point or another, understands these lines. In the end, THE CIRCUS IN WINTER leaves readers feeling as if they’re standing in the abandoned lot the morning after the circus leaves town--with that desire to follow, to learn about the mysteries and mysterious who have come and gone. I didn’t want to finish this book because Day creates a convincing, frail world with frail, convincing characters. Also, for students and instructors of writing, this book would work very well in courses on linked stories, narrative theory, and those that entertain the blurring between fiction and nonfiction.
If Alice Munro and Sherwood Anderson had a child, and that child was given up for adoption and subsequently raised by Ricky Jay, the child's name would be The Circus in Winter, and it would be an exquisite and profound collection of short stories.To say this book exceeds my expectations would be to presume that I didn't already have high expectations for it in the first place. It's so meticulously imagined, so perfect in its descriptions of "domestic" Midwestern life, that the setting of the circus town seems to blend in by the end of the book. That's not to say that the circus isn't the focus; I mean that it doesn't rest on this wonderful idea for a setting as a gimmicky plot device. It's the characters who are the most important here, and it's wonderful to see their varying degrees of attachment to the circus - what brought them to it, what they long for outside of it, what they sacrificed for it, and how it has defined them throughout their lives. Nothing about it feels cheap, and I can't help but think a lesser writer wouldn't be able to make the circus seem so perfectly and memorably real. This book is what Carnivale wants to be when it grows up.I'm curious how the stories would stand on their own - I found it hard to put down and especially liked the interconnectedness of the stories. It was great to see the way that the various flaws and triumphs of the characters' youths affected them when they appear as older characters in other stories. I find it difficult to pick a favorite, though I really enjoyed "The Last Member of the Boela Tribe." I also really loved the "This is what she wanted to say/This is what actually happened" format - not overused, and effective when it was. A wonderfully written book, and highly recommended. I wish more books about “the old, weird America” were as good as this one.
Do You like book The Circus In Winter (2005)?
This book is a collection of related stories about the history of winter circus life in Peru, Indiana. Each story introduces new individuals, but their lives end up intertwined with others. This town is close to where I grew up and live and I enjoyed the many local references and reflections on life on small-town Indiana (although I like to think our town is not small-town Indiana, many things ring true). I took my children to the summer youth trapeze show there years ago and visited the carnival and circus museums as well. At first the book was a little hard to get into, but once I started seeing the lives of the characters intertwine, I became involved. Cathy Day's writing style is very readable and she delves into both historical aspects as well as possible scenarios of what might have happened in people's personal lives.
—Dagmar
I suspect this book works best if you grew up in the Midwest. Unlike some other reviewers, I didn't find it confusing at all -- I rather enjoyed, during the later stories, having to piece together the way the descendents of the earlier stories fit into the narrative of the circus. The bleakness of the Indiana winter, the way that the circus heyday still keeps its fingers hooked into the lives of the people of Lima even as the town decays around them, the sense of hopelessness and longing -- I couldn't put this book down. It's not a difficult read, but it's worth reading. If you know anything about the history of Peru, IN, it's probably a little more interesting, but I don't think it's necessary in order to enjoy the book. It is probably more crucial that you have a sense of what it's like to grow up in a place like this.
—Nicole
Cathy was a professor of mine at the University of Pittsburgh, and one of the few to have actually published something significant (other than David Walton's Ride and Marcia Landy's gazillion text books about Italian film), so I felt obliged to give the book a once over. I've always liked Cathy, and I think she's a damn fine professor, but I didn't know what to expect from her book. If I'd have known how good it was, I wouldn't have waited so long to read it.I suppose it's one of those things, assuming that because you know someone you expect to see flaws in what they do--after all, they're just human. But the flaws in The Circus in Winter are few and far between. These eleven connected short stories are each skillfully told and unbelievably engrossing, truly amazing pieces of fiction on their own that come together to create a brilliant collection as a whole. The laundry list of rave reviews in the first few pages does not lie: this book is really, as the Boston Globe put it, "one of the most sublimely imaginative and affecting books I've read in years."
—Jeremy Zerbe
