A girl made of air by Nydia Hetherington
Quercus, 2020. ISBN: 9781529408881. 376pp.
(Age: 16+) The phenomenon of the circus has mesmerised authors and
readers alike.
With a chequered history, but always an intriguing one, the lives of
circus people have made great subjects for storytelling - Angela
Carter's Nights at the Circus, Erin Morgenstern's The
Night Circus, Sara Gruen's Water
for Elephants, Roald Dahl's Matilda,
to name a few. This debut novel by Nydia Hetherington brings the
circus to life with all its magic, passion, and dangers. The
nameless narrator, thrown into the circus spotlight, soon becomes a
great tight-rope walker; in the course of her story, she reveals the
glory days and the heartaches of the circus life, weaving folklore
and fantasy as the reader follows her path to celebrity. Woven
through her tale is the search for a lost child - 'I should really
be writing about the child, about how I lost her and why I must find
her, even after all these years. It's why I am writing all this
down.'
The author brings her acting and theatre experiences to her writing
- she established her own theatre company in Paris - and this
successfully engages the reader in a world now lost and largely
forgotten. The writing is fresh; I enjoyed its novel approach the
subject.
Julie Wells