The Circus in Winter [Hardcover]

Cathy Day (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 5, 2004

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. In Lima an elephant can change the course of a man's life-or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show's manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners. Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Day's debut collection spins graceful, elegant circles around the inhabitants of Lima, Ind.—especially the acrobats, clowns and circus folk of the Great Porter Circus who spent their winters there from 1884 to 1939. The poignant opening tale reveals how Wallace Porter, distraught by the death of his beloved wife, came to own his eponymous menagerie. The second, "Jennie Dixianna," introduces the dazzling, tricky Jennie, who wears her wound from her Spin of Death act "like a talisman bracelet, a secret treasure" and plots her way into Wallace's heart. Other stories tell of the young black man who plays at being an African pinhead; the son of a trainer killed by his circus elephant; the flood that devastated the circus. 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. Day, who grew up in a town like Lima and descends from circus folk herself, uses family stories, historical research and archival photographs to weave these enchantments. Though her stories often contain tragedy and violence—death in childbirth or from floodwater, cancer, circus mishap—they're also full of beauty. In "The Bullhook," Ollie, a retired clown, spends long decades with his frigid wife, waiting, armed with his father's bullhook, for death to come for him. In "Circus People," Ollie's granddaughter reflects on her fellow itinerant academics, "my latest circus family," and muses about people all over America who leave the place they grew up: "when the weather and the frequency are just right, we can all hear our hometowns talking softly to us in the back of our dreams." B&w illus.
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From Booklist

The secret lives and loves of circus people and their descendants are revealed in these 11 linked short stories. From 1884 to 1939, the small town of Lima, Indiana, hosts the Great Porter Circus during the winter months. Wallace Porter buys the circus on the eve of his beloved wife's death, claiming he has "seen the elephant." He never remarries but has a secret affair with Jennie Dixianna, the erotic acrobat who seduces men and keeps their secrets locked in a cedar box. Bascomb Bowles and his wife, Pearly, recount their sideshow adventures as "pinheads," and the tales are handed down to their son, Gordon. Gordon becomes an expert on elephants and witnesses a horrific accident involving his favorite elephant and the trainer. Ollie Hofstadter, son of the elephant trainer, leaves a career as a clown after the murder of his best friend. Years later Gordon tells Ollie the true story of his father's death. A fascinating period in American history inhabited by colorful characters and told in a lively manner. Kaite Mediatore
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (July 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015101048X
• ISBN-13: 978-0151010486
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #380,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Circus as Legacy, June 18, 2004

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Circus in Winter (Hardcover)

Cathy Day's fine debut collection is comprised of varied stories linked through the people, both principals and descendents, of the Great Porter Circus, a show that calls Lima, Indiana home during the off-season. The author begins with "Wallace Porter," a story that tells of how the original tragedy that gave birth to the Great Porter Circus. From there, the stories branch out like a complicated family tree. Many of the characters are haunted by the death of an impressive elephant, Caesar, who was shot to death after killing his owner, as they try to make sense of their individual lives. One of the strongest stories, "The Last Member of the Boela Tribe," reads as a condensed novel by tracing four generations and their connection to the circus and Caesar. The final piece "Circus People", told in the first-person voice of a thirty-something college professor who returns for her grandfather's funeral, pulls all the others together with a sweeping look at the legacy of the defunct circus.

The subtitle of this book, "Fiction", is an apt one since "Stories" doesn't convey the connectedness of these stories. Not a true novel, this book nonetheless ties together themes and events as well as characters. Reading these stories back-to-back is essential to feeling their full emotional power. The truly wonderful part of "The Circus in Winter" is the restraint Day exhibits in what could have been a sensationalist account of the sideshow freaks, clowns, managers, and trainers. Instead, her prose is transparent, without flourish or lyricism, and she steers clear of sentimentality. To add to the strong writing, black-and-white photographs of circus memorabilia and moments introduce each story, adding the feel of a documentary and a sense of nostalgia.

In this first collection, Cathy Day proves herself an adept storyteller. I highly recommend it for readers of contemporary short fiction.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an astounding achievement, brilliantly written, thematically compelling, July 31, 2005

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Circus in Winter (Paperback)

Some fifty years from now, literary critics will judge Cathy Day's debut novel, "The Circus in Winter," as a masterpiece of early twenty-first century American fiction. So that there is no misunderstanding my opinion of "Circus," I believe her writing is exquisite, luminescent and profound. In the same manner that Sherwood Anderson captured the essence of a small Midwest town in "Winesburg, Ohio," Day, with compassion and extraordinary insight, has drawn a portrait of a physical and emotional community in our heartland. Lima, Indiana, the wintering spot for the Great Porter Circus, emerges as a microcosm of the human condition. Through Day's assured and courageous interrelated stories, we learn more than we want, not just about circus life, but the dreams, disappointments and desires that motivate our behaviors.

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."

One of Day's most significant triumphs is her revisionist interpretation of the ringmaster's oft-repeated benediction: "May all your days be circus days." Said as a blessing, the words often indicate a curse. The author understands the conflicting impulses which draw us to the circus. We wish to be disgusted as much as we wish to be entertained. We hope to be made afraid as much as we want to laugh. We admire the singularity of circus performers but are repelled by their transience, aberrance and recklessness. These contradictory impulses of mirth and menace, of delight and death, of hope and helplessness appear and reappear in the characters whose lives we come to understand in "Circus."

Each story contains its own truth, and every character discovers some essential epiphany. The founder of the circus, Wallace Porter, purchases a floundering circus in 1885 as a result of unbearable loss. Deprived of love, Porter intends to redeem a broken promise made to his terminally-ill young wife. He learns that no endeavor can replace a cavernous hole in the heart. Jennie Dixianna has escaped a brutal childhood and has perfected a "Spin of Death," in which she repeatedly swivels from a hanging rope, leaving her wrist perpetually bloody. She understands men's wants and needs, but is unable to love. Instead, he collects what her lovers have left. In a cedar box is "contained the flotsam of men's pockets, the skeletons that hung like ghosts in their back-hall closets." Her story is a "collage of broken glass from a thousand shattered bottles, and each new shard made her stronger and more beautiful."

Day is unafraid of tackling the circus' perpetuation of racism. Bascomb Bowles emerges as a living symbol of our national need to humiliate African-Americans. His career with the Great Porter Circus ironically begins as an African "pinhead," a perceived promotion from his previous job of cleaning human waste from "honey buckets." Bowles is aware that he is perpetuating a stereotype; yet he brings a quiet dignity to his own struggles for economic and emotional survival. We watch with predictable horror and shame as Bowles' family evolves over the next four generations. The author also shows how one singular event, the death of an elephant trainer, transmutes itself into story and myth over time, affecting the descendants of the deceased and influencing their perceptions of possibility, obligation and purpose. Day compels us to acknowledge that we prefer illusion to truth, interpretation instead of facts, comfort over conscience.

Although "The Circus in Winter" ought be read as written, you could pick any story as a point of origin. Cathy Day's prose is so seamless that each chapter could stand by itself but remains essential to the novel's whole. Her characters, painstakingly drawn and honestly rendered, compel us to examine ourselves, to learn how much we wrestle with the same dilemmas, how much we are circus people. After the greasepaint is removed, after the illusion is replaced by the everyday, after the excitement is tempered by frustration, the characters of the Great Porter Circus must face themselves. When we confront them, we see ourselves.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home Town Reader, August 3, 2004

By 

M. Berkshire (Peru, Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Circus in Winter (Hardcover)

As a resident of Peru, Indiana, it was a pleasure to read Cathy Day's excellent short stories. I'm a transplant to this small midwestern town with its strange and interconnected history, and all the old stories I have heard about Peru became transformed into lively fiction with just enough truth to make me laugh out loud. My favorite story was "Winnesaw" which was about the 1913 flood, still remembered by many living here. I also loved her ending with circus people and town people juxtaposed. Cathy came to Peru during "Circus Days" to sign and sell her book and it is already sold out. I hope she is writing another set of stories right now!