Rose Page is a Cheltenham local and college lecturer in English. She has a Masters in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Culture and Thought, as well as a Bachelors in English Literature & Philosophy.

Her monthly feature, ‘Book Club Picks’, will see Rose choose two books – one classic, one modern – with suggestions on discussion points for book clubs, as well as a brief description and comparison to other publications for more relaxed readers.

The brilliant Gifford’s Circus begins its annual series of performances this month, touring the village greens of our county and, in recent years, much further afield.

Their nostalgic brand, inspired by Victoriana and with a focus on the surreal and fantastical, reminds me of a much-loved sub-genre of magical realism – the Carnivalesque.

Filled with dark humour and characterised by chaos, the two novels I have chosen from the genre contain a riot of sensory imagery and dreamlike sequences. With the resounding success of Hugh Jackman’s 'The Greatest Showman', and, more recently, Tim Burton's live-action version of 'Dumbo' in the cinemas, there has been renewed popular interest in the unique allure of the circus – and its more sinister counterpart, the freak show.

This type of literature truly transports you from reality and is perfect for reading on the upcoming hazy summer evenings.

The Classic Choice: ‘Geek Love’ – Katherine Dunn (1989)

You'll enjoy this if: You are an Angela Carter fan who devoured the striking characterisation of 'Nights at the Circus' or the complex family dynamics of 'Wise Children'.

If you enjoy narrators who take the role of outsider, both amongst and yet excluded from the action (think Nick in 'The Great Gatsby'), Dunn’s Olympia is a good example of this trope.

What’s it about?: Very much a novel of its time, 'Geek Love' is based on an extraordinary premise – two circus performer parents decide to create their own familial freak show by exposing their children to various narcotics and radioactive material in order to alter their DNA.

As you may imagine, the product of such parents is not just a brood with a host of physical abnormalities, ranging from Siamese twins to dwarfism, but also a bunch of rather emotionally unstable individuals.

Most striking is the egotistical oldest son Arturo, who creates his own personality cult within the circus where believers begin to mutate themselves by removing body parts to become more like him.

Dunn depicts these 'disciples' with pitch black humour, as the most fanatical of them, reduced to just a head and torso, gain the privilege of sitting and cheering at the front of his sermons, all the while begging for further amputations.

Beautiful twins Elly and Iphy represent the opposite end of the scale – they are tragic victims at every turn and utterly debilitated by their condition.

Likewise, our narrator writes cynically of the family’s lifestyle and experiences, retrospectively acknowledging the mental and physical scars that the circus left on her family.

A fascinating parallel narrative set in the present-day features Olympia’s daughter Miranda (conceived through the strangest form of incest!) and serves as a commentary not on 60s drug culture but the contemporary cult of beauty, as Miranda contemplates whether to have her own – relatively minor – deformity of a small protruding tailbone removed cosmetically.

Discussion Questions:

• We can read Dunn’s novel as a satire – a fierce critique of the recklessness of 'hippy age' drug-taking in the name of enlightenment. What else did you spot that is parodied or attacked in the story? Consider her response, for instance, to the popularity of the 'televangelists' dominating US TV channels in the 1980s.

• Through the Binewski family, different forms of 'otherness' are explored. Why do some of the family members seem to profit from their status as other, while others are ostracised and shamed?

• Relationships between parents and children are central to the plot of the novel. Almost all are faulty or dysfunctional in some way – which would you say is the worst and why?

• There is a lot of elemental imagery used in the novel – particularly that of water (connected to Arturo's act and his cult) and fire (connected to Chick). What significance do these elements have and what do they contribute to the story?

• What did you think of the character of Mrs Lick in the present-day narrative? How nefarious are her intentions in paying for beautiful women to undergo mutilating operations?

• The original publisher, Alfred Knopf, made some unusual design decisions regarding how the book was marketed – its striking orange cover and asymmetrical lettering was very anomalous with the styles of the era. Moreover, they allowed their logo (a spotted dog) to be redrawn with an extra leg in its place on the spine. What might have influenced these decisions?

The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstein (2011)

You’ll enjoy this if: Morgenstein's novel is more heavily indebted to traditional magical realism so will particularly appeal to existing fans of the genre.

Its depiction of a verdant ice garden, for instance, bears a striking similarity to the opening of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' where Colonel Buendia recalls going with his father to a travelling show to see ice for the first time in his life.

It also borrows imagery and atmosphere from Isabel Allende’s 'House of the Spirits'. Embodying the idea of the magical becoming everyday and the everyday becoming magical, fans of Guillermo del Toro's films such as 'Pan's Labyrinth' will also savour the world Morgenstein creates.

What's it about?: Another novel, another surreal circus. Morgenstein’s version is given the romantic epithet ‘Le Cirque des Rêves’ (The Circus of Dreams) and, like Arturo’s cult in Dunn, it has its own group of super-fans, known as 'Dreamers' who follow it from location to location.

More otherworldly than 'Geek Love', the circus is the stuff of both dreams and nightmares – beautiful visions of magic are juxtaposed with sinister rivalries and violence amongst the performers.

Action centres around the forbidden love of the two magicians at the centre of the circus – Celia and Marco – who are forced into their public roles as rivals by their egotistical mentors.

Bound mysteriously to the circus, they and the rest of their troupe cannot abandon their acts. Their race to produce more and more spectacular visions and feats ultimately leads to tragedy and an extraordinary conclusion to the novel’s action.

Discussion Questions:

• The names in the novel are clearly significant. Prospero, Celia’s mentor, is a name inspired by Shakespeare’s 'The Tempest’ (as, indeed, may be Miranda in ‘Geek Love' – Prospero's daughter in the Shakespeare). What do you know about Shakespeare’s character and how might this namesake be relevant? What other Shakespearian allusions did you spot?

• Throughout the novel, we readers are encouraged to challenge our assumptions about reality. Morgenstein uses the concept of liminality – where the boundary between the real and the illusory becomes blurred and shifting. Where can you spot examples of this?

• Is it ironic that the visitors use the circus for escapism, while the acts cannot escape the circus?

• What role does time play in the novel? Is the shifting and uncertain nature of time at the circus (seen also in the nonlinear narrative that flips between past and present) a gift or a curse to those it affects? How effective is it to have an atemporal setting – i.e. not a specific historical era?

• The ending is particularly surreal and relies us to contemplate the philosophy of metaphysics (i.e. the nature of our existence). Did you find it an appropriate ending? How does it befit or betray the style of the rest of the novel?

• Morgenstein uses an Oscar Wilde quotation as her epigraph – “A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”. Both the circus members and their visitors take on the role of dreamers in the novel. What does Wilde's quote suggest dreaming leads to?