Great Circle: The soaring and emotional novel shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021
Maggie Shipstead
THE EPIC AND EMOTIONAL NEW YORK TIMES AND TIMES BESTSELLER
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Amazon Book of the Year
Time Magazine Book of the Year
Waterstones fiction Book of the Month
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'A GRIPPING HISTORICAL ADVENTURE' STYLIST
'SO BEAUTIFUL, SO DARING, SO COMPLETE' TAYLOR JENKINS REID, author of Carrie Soto is Back
'A MASTERPIECE' NIGELLA LAWSON
EXTRAORDINARY' NEW YORK TIMES
'ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVOURITE NOVELS' READER REVIEW *****
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A soaring, breathtakingly ambitious novel that weaves together the astonishing lives of a 1950s vanished female aviator and the modern-day Hollywood actress who plays her on screen.
Marian Graves is driven by a need for freedom and danger. From her days as a wild child in prohibition America to the blitz and glitz of wartime London, she is determined to live an independent life.
But it is an obsession with flight that consumes her most.
Having become one of the most fearless pilots in her time, she sets out to do what no one has done before: to circumnavigate the globe from pole to pole.
But shortly before completing the journey, her plane disappears, lost to history.
Over half a century later, troubled film star Hadley Baxter is offered to play Marian in the comeback role of a lifetime. From the first pages of the script, Hadley is drawn inexorably to the female pilot.
It is a role that will lead her to an unexpected discovery, throwing fresh and spellbinding light on the story of the unknowable Marian Graves.
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WATERSTONES FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH JUNE 2022
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021
A ROYAL READING ROOM PICK 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA GOLD CROWN 2022
TIME MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER MAY 2021
TIMES BESTSELLER JUNE 2022
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'Full of adventure, passion and tragedy' THE TIMES
'Soars from the very first page' SUNDAY EXPRESS
'Luminous, masterful. Glides seamlessly through the 20th century' TELEGRAPH, Best Fiction of 2021
'Breathtaking' OBSERVER
'Truly exceptional storytelling, combining a sweeping arc of history with writing that, at sentence level, is near-flawless.' THE BOOKSELLER
'A tour-de-force' DAILY EXPRESS
'Impressive and gripping' SUNDAY TIMES
'Surprising and moving at every turn' GUARDIAN
'Audacious and Immersive' DAILY MAIL
'Accomplished and ambitious' FINANCIAL TIMES
Readers love GREAT CIRCLE:
***** What a read! Immense story with beautifully created characters
***** The story is so well researched and planned; historical fiction standing side by side with history itself
***** This is a stunning achievement, my perspective feels fundamentally transformed through reading it
***** A wonderful saga, covering a large chunk of the twentieth century
Product Details
About Maggie Shipstead
Reviews for Great Circle: The soaring and emotional novel shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021
TELEGRAPH, 'Best Fiction of 2021'
A gripping historical adventure that feels sharp, fresh and modern
STYLIST MAGAZINE
Shipstead turns phrases and observes people beautifully. Full of adventure, passion and tragedy... a glorious tribute to women who push the boundaries of their one, brief life, breaking the bonds of their place in history and their female bodies, to soar higher and faster than others; and the price they pay to live so fast
THE TIMES, 'Best Fiction of 2021'
Impressive and gripping
SUNDAY TIMES
What's so impressive is how deeply we care about each of these people, and how the shape and texture of each of their stories collide to build a story all its own. GREAT CIRCLE grasps for and ultimately reaches something extraordinary
NEW YORK TIMES
The Marian portions rove from Montana to Manhattan to Scotland and Antarctica, and read like a carnival of early-20th-century American history, packed with bootleggers, treacherous boxcar rides, and tragic shipwrecks. The Hadley chapters offer a delectable dissection of life as a celebrity, serving up an intelligent skewering of the Hollywood machine and allowing the book to take flight
VOGUE
GREAT CIRCLE is a novel of our insatiable need to stare down the terrible, magnificent vastness of it all: love, war, desire, fear ... A sweeping, swashbuckling book, full of oversaturated colour and grand destiny. The joy of this dynamic, soaring novel is not a welcome extra but its very engine
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Encompasses flight, travel adventure, identity, sexuality, family, the celebrity age - and in such beautiful writing. A masterpiece.
NIGELLA LAWSON
Rocked by the cool cadences of Shipstead's prose, readers will embark on a journey through time and space. Across 600 pages, they'll link arms with its characters as they stroll along the decks of early-1900s ocean liners, then board private jets to eavesdrop on the poolside parties of 21st-century Hollywood. They'll spot eagles arcing over the wild frontiers of Prohibition-era America then feel the lonely, existential chill of the white expanses of Antarctica - in between city breaks in Europe and Australia
INDEPENDENT
This wonderful novel weaves together the story of two women: a female aviator who goes missing in the1950s and the Hollywood star playing her in a film in the present day. A commitment that rewards with memorable characters and vivid storytelling
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, 'Best Fiction of 2021'