Great Circle
MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD
(DOUBLEDAY, 608 PP, £16.99)
Tablet bookshop price £15.29 • tel 020 7799 4064
A century apart, two women’s lives are bound together: one woman is a film star, the other a pilot. Both, in the words of the film star, are “products of vanishment and orphanhood and negligence and airplanes and uncles”. This unusual mix of ingredients is typical of Maggie Shipstead’s glorious third novel. Great Circle tells a rich, people-packed story, but the impact of the book owes as much to the shock and originality of its narrative as to its characters.
