![]() ![]() This part is a robust, textured historical novel that takes us from New York to Missoula, Alaska to Antarctica. One is the story of Marian Graves, a pilot who disappeared with her plane in 1950 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe. I’ve lost the completist urge (or maybe just the patience) to include plot overviews in my posts, so I’ll just briefly explain that Great Circle tells two stories, though not in equal measure. (Flying metaphors are such a temptation!) It seems to want to be told, the way that characters in the novel often remark that airplanes want to fly. Paradoxically, the narrative has more, rather than less, momentum because of this: you want to know how we get there, you want to be a part of it. It is capacious, immersive, and suspenseful-this last even though you know a lot, right from the beginning, about where the story is going. Great Circle was a perfect choice for my end-of-term reading treat. ![]() That’s where life is, that wedge of discrepancy. He feels the lines of latitude sliding underneath like the rungs of a ladder, watches the whitecaps through the drift meter, measuring the difference between where they are going and where they mean to go. He pencils his neat log of figures, updating the distance they’ve covered, the time they will arrive. ![]() He knows the shape of Marian’s elbow and knee visible through the cockpit doorway. He knows the airplane and its deafening drone and its gasoline reek. ![]()
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