Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Great Circle

Reading this started as a marathon, but finished in a sprint! I enjoyed learning every little tidbit I could from every scrap of text about Marion. The switches in POV and time kept the story fresh and added to the momentum for me. I found myself the least interested in the modern actress Hadley who is portraying Marion in a film, but loved the way that she was tied in more meaningfully towards the end and couldn’t put the book down for the last 150 pages or so.

If I’m being honest, it dragged at times for me, but that can also be attributed to me reading it towards the end of this semester of grad school.

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btodd12's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Great Circle takes the top spot for the longest book I’ve read in a while (608 pages/25 hours!) but the author absolutely deserves every award it has won!
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Nothing short of an epic saga, Great Circle spans multiple generations and reaches (literally) around the world. Marion Graves attempted to fly a great circle from pole to pole in 1950, but disappeared during the last leg of her journey. ✈️ Yes, this is a story about flying but it is also so much more. It’s the lengths to which Marion would go to achieve her dream of being a pilot during a time when women generally couldn’t hold such a career. It’s her struggles against her controlling husband and her attempts to find true love. It’s her twin brother Jamie’s journey to becoming an artist. And fast forwarding 60 years, it’s actress Hadley Baxter’s experience playing Marion in a movie about her astonishing feats. And I’d be remiss not to mention the shipwrecks, LGTBQ, bootlegging, WWII, brothels, and Great Depression that all add to the myriad of plot lines. Summed up in a line from the book, “Hope shouldn’t be so expensive.” 💔
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I was admittedly intimidated by the size, which is why this signed copy of the book has sat on my shelves for over a year. I eventually listened on audio during a long road trip & loved it. The only parts I didn’t care for were the early chapters of Hadley Baxter & the sexual abuse. (Definitely look up or DM me for trigger warnings, because there are several but they relate to spoilers so I’m not listing them here) While the beginning can be confusing, stick with it.

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uhm_kai's review

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adventurous challenging emotional informative inspiring sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

tbh i really loved this book even tho i wouldn't have picked it myself

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nenaveenstra's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Check the content warnings before you read this book.

Summarizing this book, or my feelings about it, in one tiny review seems impossible, as it's so big and complex. I'll try nonetheless.

There's the story of Marian Graves, who goes through trauma, multiple sexual awakenings, but stays constant nonetheless; a stubborn, boyish woman who loves to fly. There's the people who surround her, some of whom get their own stories - especially dear Jamie - some of them remain side characters to Marian's.

Then there's the story of this actress - Hadley - who plays Marian in a movie, but also has problems of her own to deal with. Fame, grief, love, scandal, finding a goal in life (no one is as blessed as Marian, after all, with a life direction handed to her on a golden plate (or in an airplane)).

I thought it was interesting, to follow these lives, but I did find myself confused quite often. This because of multiple reasons: the massive amount of characters - their names, their varying agrees of importance to the story and how exactly were they connected to Marian again; the switching timelines, and the timejumps within those timelines; and the writing, which was beautiful, but sometimes unclear on whether it was being literal or figurative.

Also unclear to me, was the meaning of this book. I'm inclined to say it was just a character study; a behind the scenes on these two women's lives and the extra mile they have to walk to achieve the same things a man can with half the effort, the trauma they have to go through, both emotionally and physically. But then why would you write this dual timeline, why not just focus on Marian, who was interesting enough on her own? Maybe it was a way of showing the discrepancies that can exist between a real life and the way outsiders view it. Oftentimes the script of the movie they're producing in modern times, doesn't rhyme with what actually happened. Take for example the (spoiler?) sapphic love affair Marian has with someone she meets during the war. Society is so eager to paint her as a straight woman that they choose to ignore this very real part of her.

That does bring me to one critique, though: the only lesbian mentioned in this book gets killed off relatively quickly after we get to know her. I get that it was necessary to the ending of the book, but damn, it's 2022, we've had enough of seeing lesbians die in media.

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anapthine's review against another edition

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adventurous dark inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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vikkom's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

This piece of fiction HITS on so many levels once it's finished. Judging by my engagement at the start I was definitely not expecting how many moments throughout that I would read a sentence and just sit there and stare and ponder, or bookmark to write down once I get up after keeping on reading.

I thought this book was going to be about this random lady Marian Graves attempting a north-south circumnavigation, and the fictional actress Hadley being fascinated and throwing herself into the history of Marian in preparation for the role. The book is about that, but I'd say that it's only about 10% that.

The rest of the book is about Marian Graves, and the people she loved and loved her, from before birth, to death; it is about Hadley, the starlet, and her journey with the pressures of hollywood, acting, falling in lust, and being... drawn to Marian and also knowing and feeling uncomfortable with the fact that the Marian she is playing is almost entirely reconstructed.

This book paints the sweeping arc of Marian's life, and the lives of the people that were most important to her. It deals with feeling multiple, contradictory feelings at once; it deals with estrangement from people you love; it deals with loving people and yet hating them; it deals with queer love in the 40s and 50s; it deals with the what-could-have-beens while acknowledging that sequences of events have a certain inevitability and circularity; and overall, it deals with the messy and complex and less-than-idyllic ways that humans connect. Lives are lived, opportunities are lost. People die. We go on.

N.B. one thing I would say though, is that it took me over half of the book (no small feat, it's a solid 300 pages) to actually get *into* the story. I think mainly because I wasn't expecting a grand sweeping whole-of-life tale, but the book comes around in a nice circle, once I realised that was what it was.

Content Warnings

chameleonhound's review against another edition

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adventurous

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

nialiversuch's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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