Great Circle

This was a mixed bag for me - on the one hand: incredible aviatrixes and adventure! On the other: 600 pages of a lot of nothing. There were so many times I want Shipstead to explore a storyline or part of a character more fully, but she would cut things short and move on to something far less engaging. It’s such a shame because the characters in this, especially Marian, are so compelling, but they felt frustratingly obscured. I could see their outlines, get a sense of their general shape, but they never became living, breathing people. The contemporary storyline with Hadley also seemed redundant and half-baked. I did enjoy the book more towards the end - once Marian’s epic pole-to-pole journey got underway I became really hooked, and I enjoyed the twists and turns this last part of the book took - but the rest of it just felt like it was going nowhere.

Wow. It took me 8 months and three different check-outs from the library to finally complete this book. In hindsight, at 600+ pages, I really should've done the audiobook because I think it would've moved a lot faster and felt more cohesive. Even so, I'm giving it 3.5 stars and rounding up to 4.

There are a lot of interesting details in this book, which suggests that Shipstead did a good bit of research. I loved learning about female aviators and their role in WWII, as well as how whiskey was flown across the border from Canada during Prohibition. This book provided good armchair travel: Missoula, Fairbanks. Seattle, Oahu, Antartica, New Zealand. And the storylines had a bit of something for everyone: a ship sinking, a plane crash, a round-the-world flight, a bad marriage, anguished artists, gay romance, hunting, Hollywood, secrets, etc.

When I first picked it up, I could tell it was going to be "my kind of book," and it largely was. I just wish I'd listened to it so it could've packed more of a wallop. Spreading it out over eight months diminished the experience.