From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus made the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page. [Harcourt]
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
Funny and tough-minded, yet tender and touched with magic: this is a real find.
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Outstanding
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Library Journal Beth E. Andersen
Meticulously researched and graced with a dozen lovely black-and-white historical circus photographs, Day's portrayal of life under and outside the big top is accomplished.
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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times Wendy Smith
Cathy Day performs a balancing act as deft as any tightrope walker's in The Circus in Winter, a marvelous debut collection of connected stories about circus folk and their descendants in a small Midwestern town. [12 Sept 2004, p.R8]
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
Thanks to finely observed details and lovely prose, each of these stories is a convincing world in miniature, filled with longing and fueled by doubt.
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Outstanding
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Boston Globe Caroline Leavitt
One of the most sublimely imaginative and affecting novels I've read in years.
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Outstanding
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Chicago Tribune Porter Shreve
Foregoing the rising and falling action of traditional plot, Day has assembled instead a living museum of the town's history, a portrait gallery of its fascinating residents across time.[27 June 2004, p.C5]
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
An elegantly juggled debut collection of interconnected stories.
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Favorable
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Booklist Kaite Mediatore
A fascinating period in American history inhabited by colorful characters and told in a lively manner. [July 2004, p.1817]
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Sarah Coleman
Because of this disjunction between its two halves, The Circus in Winter lacks some cohesiveness and emotional heft. That's a small price to pay, though, when an author has the kind of natural storytelling gifts Day exhibits here.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Gary Krist
She succeeds in appropriating much of the garish pungency of the world of freaks, geeks and sideshow Houdinis without succumbing to its ready banalities...This is one circus act that doesn't rely on dependable gimmicks to keep the audience amused.
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