The Infinite Horizon of Marian Graves
Some books just feel too big for their covers. Honestly, when you first pick up Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, the sheer physical weight of the thing—over 600 pages of dense, ambitious prose—can be a little intimidating. It’s an epic. It’s a tragedy. It’s a technical manual on early flight and a scathing satire of modern Hollywood all rolled into one.
The story follows two women separated by a century. First, there’s Marian Graves. She’s a fictional aviator born in the early 1900s who survives a literal shipwreck as a baby only to spend her life trying to escape the gravity of the earth. She wants to fly a "great circle" around the globe, passing over the North and South Poles, a feat that would make her a legend—if she survives. Then, in 2014, we meet Hadley Baxter. Hadley is a scandal-prone movie star whose parents died in a plane crash. She’s been cast to play Marian in a biopic, and she’s basically using the role to figure out if her own life is actually worth the tabloid ink it consumes.
You’ve probably heard people compare Marian to Amelia Earhart. It’s a fair comparison on the surface, but Shipstead’s creation is far darker and more complicated. Marian isn’t a "poster girl" for feminism; she’s a woman who makes brutal, often selfish choices to keep herself in the sky.
Why Great Circle Maggie Shipstead is More Than Just a Pilot Story
What most people get wrong about this book is thinking it’s just historical fiction. It’s not. It’s a meditation on scale. Shipstead, who spent years as a travel writer, brings a staggering level of detail to the table. She famously traveled to Antarctica and lived in Missoula, Montana, just to get the "feel" of the air right.
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The Two Timelines: A High-Stakes Mirror
The book jumps back and forth. One minute you’re in a 1920s Montana bootlegger’s den, and the next you’re on a digital film set in Los Angeles.
- The Marian Narrative: This is the heart of the book. It spans the sinking of the Josephina Eterna in 1914 to Marian's disappearance in 1950. We see her childhood in Missoula, her "partnership" with a dangerous bootlegger named Barclay McQueen, and her time as a ferry pilot in WWII.
- The Hadley Narrative: This part is prickly. Hadley is messy. She’s impulsive. Many readers find her harder to love than Marian, but that’s the point. She represents the "legacy" of a life—how we take a complicated, breathing person like Marian and flatten them into a movie script.
Fact vs. Fiction
Is Marian Graves real? No. But she feels real because Shipstead weaves her into actual history. Marian flies with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in the UK, a real-world organization where women flew military planes during the war. Shipstead even used a statue of Jean Batten, a real New Zealand aviator, as the initial spark for the story.
The Ending That Everyone Is Still Talking About
I won't spoil the "twist," but the resolution of Great Circle Maggie Shipstead is one of those endings that makes you want to flip back to page one immediately. It addresses the mystery of Marian’s final flight in a way that feels earned, not gimmicky.
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Shipstead avoids the "missing pilot" clichés. Instead, she looks at what it means to actually vanish. Is it a failure? Or is it the ultimate act of freedom? By the time you reach the final entries of Marian’s logbook, the book’s title takes on a new meaning. A great circle is the shortest distance between two points on a sphere, but in this novel, it’s the loop of a life returning to its source.
How to Get the Most Out of Reading Great Circle
If you’re planning to dive into this 600-page beast, here is some honest advice.
Don't rush the Montana sections. The early chapters about Marian and her twin brother Jamie in Missoula can feel slow, but they lay the emotional groundwork for everything that happens in Alaska and Antarctica later. Jamie’s storyline, which involves his life as a sensitive artist and his own struggles with trauma, is just as moving as Marian's.
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Pay attention to the names. Shipstead uses naming conventions and "ghost" characters to link the two timelines. Small details in the 1930s often pop up as Easter eggs in Hadley’s 2014 world. It's a "detective" experience as much as a literary one.
Listen to the audiobook if you’re struggling. The dual narrators (Cassandra Campbell and Alex McKenna) do an incredible job of distinguishing the voices. Hadley’s chapters have a sharp, cynical bite, while Marian’s feel more grounded and atmospheric.
Actionable Insights for Readers
- Read the ATA history: If you loved the wartime sections, look up the real-life "Attagirls" of the Air Transport Auxiliary. Their true stories are just as wild as the fiction.
- Map the route: Pull up a globe. Trace the longitudinal "great circle" from pole to pole. Seeing the physical vastness of what Marian attempted makes her obsession much clearer.
- Check out Shipstead’s short stories: If you like the prose but want something shorter, her collection You Have a Friend in 10A features the same sharp-edged observation.
- Watch for the movie news: While a film adaptation of Great Circle has been discussed since its 2021 Booker Prize shortlisting, the "Hadley" sections of the book serve as a meta-commentary on why making a movie about a real person is so difficult.