Portrait de deux femmes, une aviatrice et une actrice insoumises, fresque couvrant cinq continents, Le Grand Cercle est avant tout un hommage à tous ceux qui ont lutté pour devenir acteurs de leur vie.
Avant d'être portée disparue avec son biplan en 1950, Marian Graves aura passé sa vie à se jouer des règles imposées au " sexe faible ". Son lien indéfectible avec l'aventure et le danger s'établit dès ses premiers mois, quand elle est sauvée d'un paquebot en flammes. Puis, confiée à la garde d'un oncle fantasque dans le Montana, elle comprend à 12 ans qu'elle ne veut qu'une chose : piloter. Un rêve audacieux, mais si irrésistible qu'il la conduira à tenter un tour du globe par les deux pôles...
Bien des années plus tard, Hadley Baxter se voit confier le rôle de Marian dans le film qui retrace son existence tumultueuse. Un rôle à la mesure de cette starlette désabusée qui partage avec l'aviatrice une soif dévorante d'indépendance.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Book of the Year for The Times, The Telegraph, Daily Express, New Statesman, Good Housekeeping, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Time, Esquire, The Economist, Oprah Daily and Woman and Home ''A gripping historical adventure that feels sharp, fresh and modern'' STYLIST MAGAZINE So beautiful, so daring, so complete'' TAYLOR JENKINS REID ''A masterpiece'' NIGELLA LAWSON A soaring, breathtakingly ambitious novel that weaves together the astonishing lives of a 1950s vanished female aviator and the modern-day Hollywood actress who plays her on screen. For fans of TAYLOR JENKINS REID, WILLIAM BOYD and ANN PATCHETT ------------ From her days as a wild child in prohibition America to the blitz and glitz of wartime London, from the rugged shores of New Zealand to a lonely iceshelf in Antarctica, Marian Graves is driven by a need for freedom and danger. Determined to live an independent life, she resists the pull of her childhood sweetheart, and burns her way through a suite of glamorous lovers. But it is an obsession with flight that consumes her most. Now, as she is about to fulfil her greatest ambition, to circumnavigate the globe from pole to pole, Marian crash lands in a perilous wilderness of ice. Over half a century later, troubled film star Hadley Baxter is drawn inexorably to play the enigmatic pilot on screen. It is a role that will lead her to an unexpected discovery, throwing fresh and spellbinding light on the story of the unknowable Marian Graves. ____________________________ '' Extraordinary'' NEW YORK TIMES ''Full of adventure, passion and tragedy'' THE TIMES ''Soars from the very first page'' SUNDAY EXPRESS ''Luminous, masterful. Glides seamlessly through 20th century history '' DAILY TELEGRAPH ''Breathtaking'' OBSERVER ''Impressive and gripping'' SUNDAY TIMES '' Surprising and moving at every turn'' GUARDIAN ''A udacious and Immersive'' DAILY MAIL '' Accomplished and ambitious'' FINANCIAL TIMES Readers love GREAT CIRCLE: ***** What a read! Immense story with beautifully created characters ***** A 600 page turner that you are sad to finish ***** The story is so well researched and planned; historical fiction standing side by side with history itself ***** This is a stunning achievement, my perspective feels fundamentally transformed through reading it ***** A wonderful saga, covering a large chunk of the twentieth century
MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels SEATING ARRANGEMENTS - winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and L A Times Book Prize for First Fiction - ASTONISH ME and the Booker-shortlisted GREAT CIRCLE. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Conde Nast Traveller, The Best American Short Stories and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writer''s Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN 10A is her first story collection. Maggie Shipstead grew up in California and lives in Los Angeles, California.>
Spanning Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles, Great Circle tells the unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fifteen, she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South poles. A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian''s disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to re-define herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian''s own story, as the two women''s fates--and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times--collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.
La grâce. C'est ce que voit Joan lorsqu'elle regarde danser Arslan Rusakov. La grâce qui la sépare, elle, petite ballerine à l'Opéra Garnier, de cette superstar du ballet soviétique. Pour s'en approcher, une fois, une seule, Joan se glisse un soir dans sa loge pour une étreinte furtive, passionnée, comme une supplique : « Étonnez-moi. » Vingt ans plus tard, Joan vit dans une petite ville de banlieue en Californie, où elle se consacre désormais à son mari et à son fils, Harry. Son passé de danseuse, elle a choisi de l'oublier : toutes ces années de passion, d'efforts, de compétition permanente, et surtout ce moment où elle a compris qu'elle ne rejoindrait jamais Arslan au firmament.
Mais comment oublier quand elle regarde Harry danser ? L'enfant montre de prodigieuses aptitudes. Pour lui, Joan va renouer avec l'univers du ballet, ce monde aussi cruel que merveilleux, qui a brisé son coeur, son corps et tous ses rêves. Un monde où évolue encore Arslan Rusakov...
C'est l'événement de la saison sur l'île de Waskeke : Daphnée, l'aînée des Van Meter, se marie ! Mais alors que famille et amis sont en effervescence, son père, lui, arbore une mine maussade. Car la vie pour Winn, banquier désabusé de cinquante-neuf ans, se résume à une seule question : pourquoi les portes du Pequod, le club le plus huppé de l'île, lui restent-elles désespérément closes ? Plus que deux jours à tenir et ce mariage sera de l'histoire ancienne...
From the prize-winning author of Seating Arrangements comes the masterful story of a young woman who abandons her dreams to start a new life. Spanning decades, crossing continents, Astonish Me is stunning examination of love and sacrifice.
Joan Joyce has left her broken heart and everything she knew in New York City and settled in to a quiet family life in suburban California. But the past is not finished with her yet: before her eyes her son Harry is growing up to be the dancer she could never be. Pulled back into the glamorous, unforgiving world she had left far behind, Joan must confront the decisions she made long ago, and the choices that shaped the lives of those she loves most.
For years Joan has been trying to forget her past, to find peace and satisfaction in her role as wife and mother. Few in her drowsy California suburb know her thrilling history: as a young American ballerina in Paris, she fell into a doomed, passionate romance with Soviet dance superstar Arslan Rusakov. After playing a leading role in his celebrated defection, Joan bowed out of the spotlight for good, heartbroken by Arslan and humbled by her own modest career.
But when her son turns out to be a ballet prodigy, Joan is pulled back into a world she thought she'd left behind--a world of dangerous secrets, of Arslan, and of longing for what will always be just out of reach.
