Great Circle

Luminous, masterful … glides seamlessly through the 20th century immersing the reader. Tremendously well-written * 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’ *

MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels SEATING ARRANGEMENTS - winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and L A Times Book Prize for First Fiction - ASTONISH ME and the Booker-shortlisted GREAT CIRCLE. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Conde Nast Traveller, The Best American Short Stories and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN 10A is her first story collection. Maggie Shipstead grew up in California and lives in Los Angeles, California.

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