Maggie Shipstead

Thrilling... Great Circle starts high and maintains altitude. One might say it soars. An action-packed book rich with character... Great Circle grasps for and ultimately reaches something extraordinary. It pulls off this feat through individual sentences and sensations—by getting each secondary and tertiary character right . . . What’s so impressive is how deeply we come to care about each of these people, and how the shape and texture of each of their stories collide to build a story all its own. It’s at the level of the sentence and the scene, the small but unforgettable salient detail, that books finally succeed or fail. In that, Great Circle is consistently, often breathtakingly, sound.

A masterpiece … One of the best books I’ve ever read.

A soaring work of historical fiction . . . So convincingly does Shipstead stitch her fictional heroine into the daring flight paths of early aviators that you’ll be convinced that you remember the tragic day her plane disappeared. Great Circle is a relentlessly exciting story about a woman maneuvering her way between tradition and prejudice to get what she wants. It’s also a culturally rich story that takes full advantage of its extended length to explore the changing landscape of the 20th century. My top recommendation for this summer.

Great Circle is an epic trip—through Prohibition and World War II, from Montana to London to present-day Hollywood—and you’ll relish every minute.

A feat of a story in every sense.

Shipstead’s writing soars and dips with dizzying flair . . . With detailed brilliance, she lavishes heart and empathy on every character (save one villain), no matter how small their role. Many authors attempting to create an epic falter at the end, but Shipstead never wavers, pulls out a twist or two that feel fully earned, and then sticks the landing. An expansive story that covers more than a century and seems to encapsulate the whole wide world.

The Marian portions rove from Montana to Manhattan to Scotland and Antarctica, and read like a carnival of early-20th-century American history, packed with bootleggers, treacherous boxcar rides, and tragic shipwrecks. The Hadley chapters offer a delectable dissection of life as a celebrity, serving up an intelligent skewering of the Hollywood machine and allowing the book to take flight.

A breathtaking epic . . . This is a stunning feat.

A fat, juicy peach of a novel . . . A tremendously well-written book, epic in spirit and scope, swooping across continents and through time so effortlessly that it belies the seven years it apparently took to complete.

Accomplished and ambitious . . . Most novelists have their limits and cut their cloth accordingly. Shpstead is a writer who can vividly summon whatever she chooses, taking the reader deep inside the worlds she creates. Shipstead moves us round the globe with ease; she also takes us smoothly through history . . . Her writing is confident and knowing; her descriptions of light and air sometimes beautiful. Marian Graves is a character so real that I twice googled her to check.

The destinies of [Shipstead’s] unforgettable characters intersect in ways that reverberate through a hundred years of story. Whether Shipstead is creating scenes in the Prohibition-era American West, in wartime London, or on a Hollywood movie set, her research is as invisible as it should be, allowing a fully immersive experience. Ingeniously structured and so damn entertaining; this novel is as ambitious as its heroines—but it never falls from the sky.

Highly recommended—intricately designed, [with a] compelling cast of characters. As Hadley learns some of Marian’s secrets, readers will wonder how much we can truly know anyone.

Transcendent . . . A rolling, roiling epic . . . Through the interwoven stories of impetuous flyer Marian Graves and flavor-of-the-month actress Hadley Baxter, Shipstead ponders the motivating forces behind acts of daring defiance, self-fulfillment and self-destruction. An ambitious, soaring saga—[Shipstead] takes her characters to dizzying heights, drawing readers into lives of courage and mystery.

Inherently epic . . .Shipstead sweeps readers from earth to sky and back again . . . Underpinning it all is a reverence for nature, thrumming in the forests of Montana, the jagged peaks of Alaska and the stupefying ice shelves of the Antarctic. Shipstead’s exhilarating, masterful depictions of Marian’s flights feel like shared experiences that invite readers to contemplate both magnitude and majesty. Great Circle is sure to give even firmly earthbound readers a new appreciation for those who are compelled ever skyward.

So dazzling, so sure-handed and fearless, that at times I had to remind myself to breathe.
  

A novel you must read.

I will be paying close attention to Shipstead’s career from here on in.

A breathtaking work of art.

Precise…. Flawless…. Transcendent.
 

A grand arabesque into the world of dance. . . . Thrilling. 

Electrifying. . . . Astonish Me shines.

The inner lives of [Shipstead’s] characters feel as real and immediate as the shifting settings they inhabit: still-gritty mid-1970s Manhattan, shabbily elegant Paris, the sunbaked suburban sprawl of Southern California. . . . Shipstead’s youth may be a talking point, but her talent transcends it. She’s astonishing.

Seamless and full of small elegances . . . Lovely. . . . Reading Astonish Me, I didn’t need to be astonished. I was happy.

 
“A searing rumination on insecurity, secrecy, and friendship. . . . Shipstead nails the details of being perpetually en pointe” —O, The Oprah Magazine
 

Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn’t let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.
 

Sardonic and insightful. . . . [Shipstead] does caustic humor, simmering hostilities, and social envy well.
 

Deeply engrossing . . . [A] thoughtful meditation on the relentless pursuit of perfection and just how far we’re willing to go for love.

A bravura display of high-performance art, the only constant its quest for perfection.
 

The emotionally nuanced tale of barre-crossed lovers and the majestic, mysterious world of professional dance. A supple, daring, and vivid portrait of desire and betrayal.

Shipstead’s insights into human nature take center stage. The story’s surprisingly satisfying outcome encourages us to accept imperfection and even take refuge in doing so.
 

Bold and thrilling. . . The way the characters come together in new and surprising pairings is one of the book’s many pleasures.
 

Full of delights. . . . Maggie Shipstead is a writer to watch.

Impressively sure-footed .

Sharp and memorable . . . Full of the kind of keen observations about people and relationships that made her first book, Seating Arrangements, one of 2012’s most delightful literary surprises.
 

Exhilarating.

Spans continents, decades, and generations . . . . A total pleasure to read.

Beneath the surface of this summery romp lie animosities, well-paced sexual suspense and a clash between appearances and authenticity. . . . Waltzlike.

The novel I’ve been recommending this summer to anyone, female or male, who’s looking for the trifecta—a good story that’s beautifully written and both hilarious and humane.
 

This gorgeous, wise, funny, sprawling novel about family, fidelity, and social class, is the best book I’ve read in ages.
 
 

 “Shipstead’s weave of wit and observation continually delights. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday she trades her Lilly Pulitzer for something from Joseph Pulitzer.

Seating Arrangements delightfully and poignantly upends the WASP idyll….Sparkles while it slays.

Maggie Shipstead is an outrageously gifted writer, and her assured first novel, Seating Arrangements, is by turns hilarious and deeply moving.

Shipstead doesn’t just follow in [John Updike and Jane Smiley’s] footsteps; she beats a distinctive and dazzling path of her own. The world has found a remarkable, humane new voice to explain us to ourselves.

Whipsmart and engaging.

A wickedly clever tragicomedy of manners that unfolds with the plotting of a juicy mystery and the sharp eye of someone only too aware of the subtle, seemingly pointless class distinctions within the one percent.

Shipstead seems at home in the Waspy milieu of private schools and their preening, privileged attendees. . . . A keen-eyed rendering of America’s self-invented caste.

This is one of those rare debut novels that neither forsakes plot for language nor language for plot. It is gratifying on every scale.

Precise, skilled, quick-witted, and warm-hearted.

Dead-on delightful. . . . A champagne-fueled, saltwater-scented comedy of upper-crust New England manners and mores.

A wise, sophisticated and funny novel about family, fidelity, class and crisis.

A pitch-perfect debut from a master storyteller, Seating Arrangements is a rich and deep work: a smart, consuming novel that manages also to be delightfully funny. A romp of a book, with whales and weddings and wealth, it is, at its heart, a warning against the empty seductions of status and exclusivity.

Elegant, delightful. . . . Shipstead’s sentences simmer and crackle on the page.

[A] mordant, ferociously clever comedy of manners.

Delightful. . . . Seating Arrangements brims with sharp observations about love, lust, family, and the real meaning of marital bliss.

[A] spicy debut.

Funny and dark and poignant—sometimes all at once. Shisptead is a gifted storyteller whose richly realized characters and sweetly flowing prose coalesce into a tale that is by parts sweet and sharp, humorous and heartbreaking. It’s an auspicious debut by an undeniably talented writer.

Wonderfully juicy, frothy and delightful.

A delicious comedy of manners . . . that has fun with all things rich, all things wedding and all things inappropriate.

Zestful yet acerbic. . . . For all its madcap quirkiness, Shipstead’s adroit escapade artfully delivers a poignant reflection on the enduring if frustrating nature of love, hope, and family.

[Shipstead’s] book places a magnifying glass over classic New England upper-crust culture. . . . Whether reading Seating Arrangements is like looking into a mirror or peeking through the window, the gin-soaked escapades are difficult to turn away from.