100 Books 66 - Erin Morgenstern's THE NIGHT CIRCUS

I want Tarsem Singh to direct a film adaptation of this movie, STAT. And I need a red scarf, also STAT.

Singh because I think he would bring The Night Circus's vividly imagined sights and sounds (alas, no way to bring the smells as yet, in any way that isn't hokey and cost-intensive, I suspect) to eye-popping life, and I want to see them: unlike some readers, my mind's eye isn't all that clever. I'm a verbal girl. I mostly yawn through detailed descriptions of fabrics and color schemes and intricate designs, and can't be arsed to do the work of making them into pictures in my head. So, since said detailed descriptions make up the bulk of The Night Circus's pages, one might expect that I yawned through this book.

But I didn't.

I think what makes the difference is the writing itself, which is poetic and gorgeous in its own right, so I never yawned, and instead was filled with longing to actually see what was being described. I suppose that's my background in comics coming out (and indeed, if for some reason I don't get my film of this, I'd settle for a graphic novel, with, say, Christian "Infinite Vacation" Ward on art detail. Or Fiona Staples. With Dave Stewart on colors... Ahem).

Anyway, while this book is a little thin on plot (and what plot there is owes a lot to Christopher Priest's fantastic novel that was spoiled by its film adaptation, The Prestige, and maybe a bit to Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, too, and of course Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes if you drained out most of the wicked and just left the wonder), it's a treat to read, dreamy and evocative as hell and just the sort of bedtime story you'd want to read to your kids, if you want them to grow up to be art snobs.

I loved it.