Shipstead's Great Circle Takes Readers on a Wondrous Flight

In December 1914, the Josephina Eterna, a ship carrying five hundred and twenty-three passengers and a secret cargo in the hold, burned in the north Atlantic. The captain, Addison Graves, committed an unpardonable sin. He escaped the inevitable fiery death, leaping to a lifeboat with a swaddled infant under each arm. His newborn twins, Marian and Jamie, survived, and a wondrous novel was born.

When asked last night by a friend what “Great Circle” was about I was momentarily stumped. This remarkable novel spans over a hundred years. It explores the history of women in aviation, revealing how they were exploited for their “manly” desires, their wanderlust, their willingness to push boundaries. It touches on Roosevelt’s WPA and the wartime options for conscientious objectors. It examines sexual attractions in all their iterations without judgment or shame, and it even manages to send up the film industry, social media, and the hypocrisy of cancel culture.

I could outline the intricate plot for you but why would I do that and ruin the delight that awaits you as that plot unfolds. Surely, even if you don’t share my life-long fascination with flight, it would be hard to resist a big, fat, six-hundred-page novel that ferries readers from Auckland, New Zealand, in a great circle around the world to Antarctica, in the cockpit with Marian Graves, one of the fiercest, most independent women you’ll meet in fiction this year.

Art, the making of it and the appreciation of it, is another major theme and Maggie Shipstead’s style of writing exudes this artistic bent. She paints pictures with her words, whether she’s writing of the twins’ childhood in Montana, of Marian’s flights into the Canadian and Alaskan wilderness, or Jamie’s stint on the battlefields of Attu in the Aleutian Islands.

Interestingly, it’s the past that comes most alive in this story. My only complaint about this novel is its chapters that deal with current times and the making of the film about aviatrix Marian Graves based upon a fictional, romanticized version of her life. The jaded actress Hadley Baxter who landed the role of Marian is such an unformed and, in my opinion, uninteresting character that her chapters seem to fall flat. I couldn’t wait to leave Hollywood and return to the ‘40’s with Marian, Jamie, their lovers and friends.

Nevertheless, Shipstead’s glorious, descriptive language saves the day and is likely what makes her such a sought after travel journalist – take a look at some of her essays - https://www.maggieshipstead.com/ , and her stints at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Stegner fellowship at Stanford must have all led her to this third novel after “Seating Arrangements,” and “Astonish Me,” and the recent honor from the Booker prize committee. I must brag and tell you that I had already added “Great Circle” to this year's top ten list before it was nominated for the Booker long list.