Circus Of Mirrors by Julie Owen Moylan

 

Circus of Mirrors by Julie Owen Moylan.

Published 12th September 2024 by Michael Joseph.

From the cover of  the book:

In Berlin, two sisters dared to dream of a better life – but where in this dark and dazzling city will they find their true home?

BERLIN, 1926: After the death of their parents, sisters Leni and Annette only have each other.

Desperate, but dreaming of better days, Leni finds work at a notorious cabaret: the Babylon Circus.

From the dancer’s barely-there costumes, to the glimmering mirrors that cover the walls, the Babylon Circus is where reality and fantasy merge. For Leni, it’s an overwhelming new world, and she’s happiest hiding in the shadows.

Until she meets the cabaret’s resident pianist, Paul. And so begins a tentative love affair that will play out over the next forty years.

But, in a city whose divisions will define a century, can a love born within the feverish walls of the Babylon Circus ever survive?

And can the bond between Leni and Annette – tugged in opposite directions of their own – also endure?

***********

Berlin, 1926. Sisters, Leni and Annette are all that remains of their once happy family. Barely an adult herself, Leni feels responsible for six year old Annette, but hard times have found them living on Berlin's streets. Then Leni manages to find a job as a cigarette girl at the exotic Babylon Circus club: a place where the clientele clamour for the delights of the risque caberet, and are willing to pay extra for the shady services the manager Dieter can arrange 'under the counter'. 

The Babylon Circus is an education for shy and retiring Leni, but she soon begins to feel part of the club's eccentric family - especially when she meets and falls in love with the club's pianist, Paul. And so begins a romance that will shape the lives of the sisters over the next four decades...

Circus of Mirrors is the sweeping, intensely emotional story of sisters Leni and Annette, set against the backdrop of the changing faces of Berlin. The novel begins in 1926, in the political, economic and social maelstrom of the Weimar period, when the artistic and sexual freedoms associated with the Berlin cabaret scene were a stark contrast to the tough conditions Germans were enduring. Desperation finds Leni at the doors of the Babylon Circus, where Owen Moylan brings the cabaret scene alive, in all its glamorous, sordid splendour. Here Leni embarks on a love affair that will change to course of her life, and the nature of her relationship with her younger sister, Annette.

The novel then jumps forward to take in two further time periods - in the ruins of post-war Berlin, and then once again in the city as it stands on the brink of one of the darkest days of Cold War history. At each stage, we meet Leni and Annette, checking-in with how their lives have changed, and each time they are on separate sides of a personal struggle that threatens to tear their relationship asunder.

As in all Owen Moylan's spectacular books, her characters leap from the page, especially the women. She beautifully explores the pivotal decisions, and sacrifices, they have had to make in order to survive - primarily through the stories of Leni and Annette, but also through other members of the Babylon Circus family, as the world changes around them. These are real people, warts and all, and this sometimes makes them difficult to like, not least the sisters at the centre of the novel. For me, Leni is the one who deserves the most sympathy, as Annette's selfishness is rather over-powering - however, Annette is also the most complex and misunderstood of the two. In any case, when Owen Moylan eventually leads them to a place where they can finally unburden themselves, and forgive each other, I found the tears rolling down my face. 

The club provides a glorious, and poignantly nostalgic, linking thread in the novel, from frenetic heyday, to bomb-damaged bar, to burned out shell, remaining a place of significance throughout. Clever, insightful themes around love, loss, identity and belonging echo through the timelines, and Berlin stands as a character in its own right. Owen Moylan carefully chooses her 1920's, 1940's, and 1960's iterations of the city as times when significant political and social upheaval is playing out in the background of Leni and Annette's lives (an absolute joy if you are interested in 20th Century history), and yet you are only aware of these events obliquely. At any given moment it is the human characters who hold your attention, and your eye is fixed on how the turmoil of time and place affects the decisions Leni and Annette make. This is not easy to do, but Owen Moylan pulls it off with style.

This is Owen Moylan's most ambitious, and compelling, novel to date. I swallowed it whole, unable to look away for a second...

Circus of Mirrors is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Michael Joseph for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Julie Owen Moylan is the author of three novels: That Green Eyed Girl, 73 Dove Street and Circus of Mirrors. Her debut novel That Green Eyed Girl was a Waterstones’ Welsh Book of the Month and the official runner up for the prestigious Paul Torday Memorial Prize. It was also shortlisted for Best Debut at the Fingerprint Awards and featured at the Hay Festival as one of its ‘Ten at Ten’. 73 Dove Street was a Waterstones’ Books of 2023 and a Daily Mail Historical Fiction Book of the Year.

As a filmmaker Julie won the Celtic Media Award for her graduation film “BabyCakes” before going on to win Best Short Film at the Swansea Film Festival.

Her writing and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications including Sunday Express, The Independent, New Welsh Review and Good Housekeeping.

She has a Masters in Filmmaking and an additional qualification in Creative Writing & English Literature. Julie is an alumna of the Faber Academy.