THE MIDNIGHT CAROUSEL, debut magical novel of loss, grief, and redemption

THE MIDNIGHT CAROUSEL
FIZA SAEED McLYNN
Park Row / Harlequin (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The Night Circus meets Water for Elephants in this enchanting, darkly glittering story of grief, obsession, revenge, and enduring love.

Come children, come children from far and near. Come choose your steed, you galloping knights, to enjoy the fun of the carousel . . .

1920, Chicago
Maisie Marlowe has come to America for a fresh start. After discovering an antique fairground carousel, she is seized by the idea of running a glittering amusement park. But little does she know that the wondrous object has a sinister past of its own.

Paris
A decade ago, fairgoers inexplicably vanished riding an extraordinary carousel, and Detective Laurent Bisset closed the case with a suspect behind bars. So when rumors of fresh disappearances in Chicago also linked to a carousel make their way across the Atlantic, Laurent sets out for new answers to an old mystery.

Maisie and Laurent both hold clues to this dark puzzle.

But can they piece it together before the carousel claims someone else?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Carnivals are intentional, designed liminal spaces. Carousels, maybe more than most attractions at a carnival, are meeting-places for mundanity...powered separate spaces that go in endless circles like the ritual dances of so many cultures accompanied by endlessly repeating music...and magic.

Magic always demands a price, a sacrifice of treasure. It works like all the other balancing systems in nature. Benefit given, cost exacted...it is the universal law, it functions across time and (on terrestrial scales for sure) space, many cultures have a divinity whose purpose is maintaining or restoring balance: in my case I refer often to Ma'at, the Egyptian goddess of balance and rightness. In this story a terrible painful tragedy rips the balance utterly and without redress...so a perspectiveless human seeks out a powerful way to exact a price for it.

Tragedies ensue, all linked to that loss...though not obviously or directly.

What works best for me in this read is the atmosphere of unreality, made stark by the very quotidian writing. This enhances the surreal events being evoked in the direct prose. It's a debut novel, so I can't say from experience with the author if this is a stylistic trope of hers or not. As a novel, it's got some flaws. There is a great reliance on coincidence, which might or might not have been intended to heighten the sense of mysterious forces in action to redress that balance discussed above; there are dangling threads that could be intended to evoke the certainty that no pattern is ever truly complete.

Debut novels get the charitable interpretation from me. Especially debut novels that evoke similar reading experiences to The Night Circus, a read I adored in the Aughties. I hope some more work of Author McLynn's will come out soon for my delectation.