A girl made of air by Nydia Hetherington

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Quercus, 2020. ISBN: 9781529408881. 376pp.
(Age: 16+) The phenomenon of the circus has mesmerised authors and readers alike.
With a chequered history, but always an intriguing one, the lives of circus people have made great subjects for storytelling - Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, Roald Dahl's Matilda, to name a few. This debut novel by Nydia Hetherington brings the circus to life with all its magic, passion, and dangers. The nameless narrator, thrown into the circus spotlight, soon becomes a great tight-rope walker; in the course of her story, she reveals the glory days and the heartaches of the circus life, weaving folklore and fantasy as the reader follows her path to celebrity. Woven through her tale is the search for a lost child - 'I should really be writing about the child, about how I lost her and why I must find her, even after all these years. It's why I am writing all this down.'
The author brings her acting and theatre experiences to her writing - she established her own theatre company in Paris - and this successfully engages the reader in a world now lost and largely forgotten. The writing is fresh; I enjoyed its novel approach the subject.
Julie Wells

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