The Circus in Winter
by Cathy Day
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Book Summary Information
Author: Cathy DayEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-07-06
ISBN: 0156032023
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of The Circus in Winter
Book Review: an astounding achievement, brilliantly written, thematically compelling
Summary: 5 Stars
Some fifty years from now, literary critics will judge Cathy Day's debut novel, "The Circus in Winter," as a masterpiece of early twenty-first century American fiction. So that there is no misunderstanding my opinion of "Circus," I believe her writing is exquisite, luminescent and profound. In the same manner that Sherwood Anderson captured the essence of a small Midwest town in "Winesburg, Ohio," Day, with compassion and extraordinary insight, has drawn a portrait of a physical and emotional community in our heartland. Lima, Indiana, the wintering spot for the Great Porter Circus, emerges as a microcosm of the human condition. Through Day's assured and courageous interrelated stories, we learn more than we want, not just about circus life, but the dreams, disappointments and desires that motivate our behaviors.
Psychological tensions abound in this multi-generational novel-in-stories. There is the tension of an America in transition from its agrarian past to its industrial, technological present. There is the tension between men and women, between love and loss, between hopes and despair. There is the tension between illusion and reality. There is even unspoken tension in the names of the characters, particularly the Perdido family, whose Spanish surname signifies being "lost."
One of Day's most significant triumphs is her revisionist interpretation of the ringmaster's oft-repeated benediction: "May all your days be circus days." Said as a blessing, the words often indicate a curse. The author understands the conflicting impulses which draw us to the circus. We wish to be disgusted as much as we wish to be entertained. We hope to be made afraid as much as we want to laugh. We admire the singularity of circus performers but are repelled by their transience, aberrance and recklessness. These contradictory impulses of mirth and menace, of delight and death, of hope and helplessness appear and reappear in the characters whose lives we come to understand in "Circus."
Each story contains its own truth, and every character discovers some essential epiphany. The founder of the circus, Wallace Porter, purchases a floundering circus in 1885 as a result of unbearable loss. Deprived of love, Porter intends to redeem a broken promise made to his terminally-ill young wife. He learns that no endeavor can replace a cavernous hole in the heart. Jennie Dixianna has escaped a brutal childhood and has perfected a "Spin of Death," in which she repeatedly swivels from a hanging rope, leaving her wrist perpetually bloody. She understands men's wants and needs, but is unable to love. Instead, he collects what her lovers have left. In a cedar box is "contained the flotsam of men's pockets, the skeletons that hung like ghosts in their back-hall closets." Her story is a "collage of broken glass from a thousand shattered bottles, and each new shard made her stronger and more beautiful."
Day is unafraid of tackling the circus' perpetuation of racism. Bascomb Bowles emerges as a living symbol of our national need to humiliate African-Americans. His career with the Great Porter Circus ironically begins as an African "pinhead," a perceived promotion from his previous job of cleaning human waste from "honey buckets." Bowles is aware that he is perpetuating a stereotype; yet he brings a quiet dignity to his own struggles for economic and emotional survival. We watch with predictable horror and shame as Bowles' family evolves over the next four generations. The author also shows how one singular event, the death of an elephant trainer, transmutes itself into story and myth over time, affecting the descendants of the deceased and influencing their perceptions of possibility, obligation and purpose. Day compels us to acknowledge that we prefer illusion to truth, interpretation instead of facts, comfort over conscience.
Although "The Circus in Winter" ought be read as written, you could pick any story as a point of origin. Cathy Day's prose is so seamless that each chapter could stand by itself but remains essential to the novel's whole. Her characters, painstakingly drawn and honestly rendered, compel us to examine ourselves, to learn how much we wrestle with the same dilemmas, how much we are circus people. After the greasepaint is removed, after the illusion is replaced by the everyday, after the excitement is tempered by frustration, the characters of the Great Porter Circus must face themselves. When we confront them, we see ourselves.
Summary of The Circus in Winter
From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus makes the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. In Lima an elephant can change the course of a man's life-or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show's manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners.
In her astonishing debut, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives, bringing the greatest show on earth to the page.
In her astonishing debut, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives, bringing the greatest show on earth to the page.
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