Book Review of “Great Circle” by Maggie Shipstead

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Epic flying adventure novel with a twist at the end.

This novel is well-conceived as well as well-researched. It is also only the second novel written by an American and at least partially set in England in WW2 that I have read without being annoyed by all the misconceptions, half-truths and untruths -and the other stayed well away from technical matters. As Alan Myers once put it: “the reader is in safe hands.”

Covering a sweep of years from the Great War, through the Prohibition years and WW2 to nearly the present day, Great Circle has many well-drawn characters and perhaps not by accident, the only really superficial ones are found in the scenes involving Hollywood and its people. The leading characters are complex in a way that is consistent with their being driven to do really extraordinary things and I think this is the real strength of the story. “Normal” people wouldn’t have done these deeds, would not have achieved these things. But we see those extraordinary characters being forged in difficult circumstances in difficult times and they achieve by challenging, rather than accepting, the world as it is. They don’t merely overcome adversity: they are nourished by it. This is not exactly heart-warming, because they don’t make very many comfortable personal choices, but they do great things.

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead is published by Random House UK on the 4^th of May 2021.