Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead

This is an epic novel (all but defying a concise review) narrating the life story of Marian Graves from an inauspicious beginning to her tilt at circumnavigation of the world by flying a longitudinal ‘great circle’ over both poles.

Marian and her twin brother Jamie are born in 1914 to a self-destructive mother and a taciturn father who captains a transatlantic liner. The whole family is on board when a German shell cripples the ship. Mrs Graves goes down willingly with the boat, but Captain Graves, defying convention and inviting opprobrium, gathers his babes in arms and jumps aboard a lifeboat. That leads to a prison sentence and an end to his career. Meanwhile, Marian and Jamie are dumped into the care of an uncle living in rural Montana. They grow up in benign neglect, forming a friendship with local Huckleberry Finn type, Caleb.

A chance encounter with the Flying Brayfogles, a barnstorming aerobatic duo, gives young Marian an urge, a lust, a compulsion to fly aeroplanes. The book goes on to cover her against-the-odds battles to fly. Sacrifices need to be made as her life lurches from bad decision to crisis to disaster while still making progress in her ambition. Smuggling, freighting in Alaska, and delivering WW2 warplanes in Europe lead eventually to the attempt on the great circle.

Interspersed in the historical tale is a first person narrative from Hadley Baxter, a young out of favour actress, who is cast to play the lead in a movie of Marian’s life story, albeit based on the fragments and misinformation available to the scriptwriters. This false perspective, moving in parallel to the main story adds depth and enables a clever denouement, almost providing alternative endings to the story.

The epic scale (600 pages) allows Shipstead to wander off-piste to provide light touch information about early aviation, and to follow episodes in Jamie’s, Caleb’s, and Hadley’s lives, before homing back on to Marian. Hadley Baxter’s delivery may grate, while being ‘in character’, but this is outweighed by the main narrative style which breezes along nicely.