Circus in Winter by Cathy Day

Circus in Winter by Cathy Day

Introduction

The Circus in Winter is writer Cathy Day's first book. Neither novel nor short story collection, The Circus in Winter is a book of interconnected tales. The stories share settings and characters, brought together by the circus that winters in Lima, Indiana from 1884 to 1939. Author Day grew up in Peru, Indiana, the winter home of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, and is descended from circus people herself.

Thesis Statement

Psychological tensions abound in this multi-generational novel-in-stories. There is the tension of an America in transition from its agrarian past to its industrial, technological present. There is the tension between men and women, between love and loss, between hopes and despair. There is the tension between illusion and reality. There is even unspoken tension in the names of the characters, particularly the Perdido family, whose Spanish surname signifies being "lost" (Day, 2004).

At their best, Day's stories are finely crafted character studies, as shown in “Circus in Winter”, revealing the inner lives of people like Wallace Porter, who becomes a circus owner when his wife dies and he “sees the elephant.” Likewise, Day's portrait of Jennie Dixianna, the high wire Spin of Death performer, is riveting in its detail and depth. “Lone Star Ranger,” on the other hand, seems less well realized as does “The Jungle Goolah Boy,” largely due to the epistolary structure of this story.

Chickey Bowles must avange the elephant because of his unruly attitude. Chickey is unafraid of tackling the circus' perpetuation of racism. Yet the circus in its off-season, in its demise... this is where the execution comes in, and the brilliance. It doesn't end with some cliché of "circus people" as sometimes-happy family and often drunken sad-faced clowns—and it doesn't even start there.

While some of the eleven can easily be read independently, the book is deliberately designed for a cumulative effect—hence the phrase "Display No before each story, and the circus metaphor supports the form. That's pretty inspired—with, say, musical metaphors, or really even purely "theatrical" ones, this device can often seem contrived, but not here. Or perhaps "inspired" is the wrong word—there's a point where the circus metaphor, "conceit," whatever, ceases to be a metaphor at all, and becomes the reality here (Day, 2004).

That is understood. In fact, The Circus in Winter is not really about some metaphor or other (though there are plenty there if you need 'em), it's about stories, which are about characters, and what they say and how they say it and what they think and feel.

Is it a uniquely American thing to feel an intense nostalgia for times in which we never lived? Or is it just that... oh, man. That's too Quantum for me (actually it's not but this is supposed to be a Review) and maybe, to get at the Truth, the thing to do is just Tell the Story.

Each story contains its own truth, and every character discovers some essential epiphany. The founder of the circus, Wallace Porter, purchases a ...