Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Marian and Jamie Graves, who was saved as newborns from a sinking ocean ship in 1914, are brought up by their immoral uncle in Missoula, Montana. There, Marian begins a love affair with flying that will last her entire life after coming across a couple of barnstorming pilots flying around the town in dilapidated biplanes. When she is fourteen, she quits school and finds an unanticipated and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who gives her a plane and pays for her lessons. This arrangement will haunt her for the rest of her life even though it enables her to fulfil her destiny—circumnavigating the world by flying over the North and South Poles.
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
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Hadley Baxter is chosen to play Marian in a movie about Marian’s disappearance in Antarctica that will be released a century from now. Hadley is ready to redefine herself after being imprisoned in the grasp of cult notoriety by a romance film franchise. She is vivacious, cunning, and disillusioned with the claustrophobia of Hollywood. Her transformation into Marian’s persona plays out thrillingly alongside Marian’s own narrative as the two women’s fates—and their desire for autonomy in radically dissimilar contexts and eras—collide. Great Circle is a colossal piece of art that is epic and emotional, painstakingly researched and gorgeously written. It represents a huge step forward for the extraordinarily talented Maggie Shipstead.
A fictional female aviator named Marian Graves disappeared while attempting to fly around the globe from north to south across the poles. In a related tale, contemporary actress Hadley Baxter prepares for and then performs the part of Marian in a Hollywood production. Hadley’s observations about the present reveal some of Marian’s history. The lives of Marian and Hadley are shown in alternating chapters. The book’s Marian sections are longer and more in-depth, with fantastic characters and story elements. Although Hadley’s passages are sparser and even irritating, I can understand why the author incorporated her story within this grand narrative.
When Hadley got the role of Marian, she was a struggling actress and instantly related to her. Hadley is a contemporary woman who might need to relate to ancient women in order to better understand herself. Following the 1914 birth of Marian and Jamie’s twin sibling on the Josephina Eterna. Their postpartum depressed mother appears to kill herself, and their father, Addison Graves, saves the twins as the ship sinks. While serving his sentence at Sing Sing, Addison puts Marian and Jamie in the care of his brother Wallace in Montana.
Wallace is an artist who lacks the aptitude or desire to be a parent. Therefore, Marian and Jamie basically raise Caleb, a neighbour and friend whose mother is an alcoholic and a prostitute, by themselves. Marian and Caleb trade sexual favours before going through a series of on-again, off-again relationships over the course of their lives. In spite of being practically abandoned by their parents, Marian, Jamie, and Caleb all grow to trust each other and the people they encounter along the way in various ways.
