by Kelly Pickerill

Just like in the film industry, the fall is the season when some of the best books of the year are published. Publishers are gearing up for the holiday season, and slot all their brightest gems, from new authors to the old reliables, to come out during the last months of the year. So this week is an exciting one for Random House, and for us Lemurians, and for you readers, too, because The Night Circus has arrived!

I’m not sure why we haven’t talked much about the book publicly yet, because for months now we’ve certainly been talking about it in the store. We had a couple of advanced copies back in May, when John and Joe went to BEA (the big book conference in NYC), and came back telling us that everyone there was talking about the book. For a new author, whose book is months away from publication, to be buzzed about at a bookseller’s conference like BEA, that’s huge!

Lisa had already quietly read it in April (due to the savvy work of our Random House rep, Liz) and by the end of the May conference our advanced copies were hot as they passed from reader to reader. To date, these are the Lemurians who have read and loved this book:

Lisa, Kaycie, Zita, Emily, Kelly, Anna, Claire, Quinn, Ashley, Nan, Maggie. That’s just about everyone on our staff.

Erin Morgenstern visits with followers of The Night Circus at BEA in May.

On Erin Morgenstern’s book tour you can expect some enthusiastic events. One reason for this is because the book lends itself so well to creativity. The circus is the foreground of a behind-the-scenes duel between two magicians who at first don’t know each other’s identities, so they have to be content to “one-up” each other through the medium of the circus attractions. They create an ice garden, an enchanted clock, a cloud maze, and many other nifty no-limit-to-the-imagination things.

Lemuria’s event with Erin, which is October 3rd, starting at 5, is no exception. Most everything is in the planning stages still, and it’s also hush hush, but suffice it to say that you can expect to walk into a circus in the Dotcom building that Monday evening.

The Night Circus is our September pick for First Editions Club. Though Erin won’t be here till October 3rd, some of the copies that arrived this week were pre-signed. Come pick up your copy of the debut novel that’s got everyone talking this fall — The Night Circus is a thrilling, magical tale from beginning to end.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Random House, September 2011)

When this new novel arrived in the fiction room not too long ago, I was mesmerized by its catchy cover depicting a woman reclining on a chaise lounge dressed in a long period dress circa 1930s, with a handsome well dressed man gazing at her. They are obviously in a garden enjoying cigarettes, some sort of refreshment, and lively conversation, based on the huge seductive smile on her face.  I kept looking at this cover wondering what  Rules of Civility was about, not withstanding the obvious.

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As a debut novelist, the author Amor Towles has scored, as we say! Surprisingly, he is a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan, though, once upon his graduation  from Yale, he went on to receive  his master’s degree in English from Stanford. I liked his credentials immediately once I read this, but I wondered if his current involvement  in the cosmopolitan New York business world had rendered him void of exceptional fictional writing talent. Once I read that his debut novel is currently in the top five picks of the NPR recommended novels, however, I became  interested in reading this period piece for sure.

Set primarily in 1938, only a year before the Great Depression hit, New York City was abuzz with well educated, glamorous, fun loving, and often risque twenty somethings. Life was good, and living was great.

Into that environment the female protagonist Katherine, or “Katie” Kontent (pronounced like the state of well being) enters, but not as a socially privileged girl, for even though her upbringing was in the city, she was not from the Upper East Side, nor a debutante, nor did she want to be. The gaiety of the times surrounded Katie as she lived in a girls’ boarding house and met numerous eligible bachelors with whom she became involved.

One of the enticing features for the reader is the knowledge acquired about the diverse  restaurants and bars, many of which had once banded women, but were now reluctantly letting them enter, much to the dismay of some men. One particular scene, which was very fun, involved a dinner at the 21 Club. Having spent some time in New York several years ago, I was eager to read about some of the same locales which I had frequented and to learn about their customs in the late 1930s.

While most girls of the time period were searching for youthful rich potential husbands, bidding their time with only minor secretarial jobs, Katie’s intelligence and drive took her ultimately to a rising publication akin to a mixture of “The New Yorker” and “Vogue.” Because of her drive and initiative, she was once asked by her boss if she even liked men! Even though Katie could barely make ends meet once she obtained her own small apartment, she continued to work extremely hard for her boss, sometime working until 2 and 3 a.m., with no overtime pay, of course, during this time period.

Katherine’s particular love interest, which waxes and wanes throughout, throws the reader onto an emotional roller coaster throughout the novel. The author’s emotive ability to manipulate the reader’s desires to root for the heroine should not be underestimated, and at times, the reader wants to take Katherine into another room and talk to her about her decisions, some which seem so wrong for her.

The frame story, which initially puts Katherine in the 1960s, with her husband in the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at 1930s photos, which happen to have a special someone from the past in them, provides a very effective way to tell the story. Of course, the ending of the book reluctantly throws the reader forward once again to the 1960s.  Not all writers can take on the frame story and have it work as well as Amor Towles does in this novel.

One more thing of great interest to me did involve the title: Rules of Civility, the source of which is actually a short pamphlet composed by the young George Washington entitled “Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation.”

Apparently this short publication was the guide book for all young men of manners and aspirations. It so happens that Katherine’s primary love interest studied, memorized, and applied the 110 rules of etiquette and behavior in his every day life to the extent that he seemed (underline “seemed”) to be flawless. To add to the interest of this novel, the 110 rules are added in the Appendix at the end of this work of fiction.

Take a look at one of the last pages in this incredibly enjoyable novel in order to get a feel for this author’s beautiful language:

“It is a bit of a cliche to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time–by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still?

In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions–we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card, and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.”

Those readers who loved the poet T.S. Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock,” as I did, will well remember the language that Amor Towles referred to in this quote. I loved Rules of Civility already, but when I read the above, well, then, I was hooked on this novel for sure! Give yourself a treat and read this novel, and give it as a gift to someone this Christmas!

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (The Viking Press, an imprint of Penguin, July 2011)

-Nan