The scope and structure of “Astonish Me” presaged the scale of “Great Circle” but the stakes in her new book are higher - for its heroine, literally life or death.įinishing the book sometimes felt that way too. Times Book Prize for first fiction seemed to seal Shipstead’s reputation as an impeccable craftswoman of upmarket beach reads.įor her 2014 follow-up, “ Astonish Me,” Shipstead, then barely out of her 20s, traded the economic 1% for the dancing elite, tracing the repercussions of an American ballerina’s affair with a Baryshnikov-like superstar. The “perfect summer romp” (per the Washington Post) and winner of an L.A. “Great Circle” was a departure for Shipstead, whose 2012 debut, “ Seating Arrangements,” had all the “bells and smells” of High WASP: A wealthy brood tries not to unravel during their eldest daughter’s wedding on Cape Cod. All of it would serve her in the biggest challenge of her career so far: taming the once-unwieldy novel out next week. Her childhood enthusiasms were retooled into grown-up passions. She became a daredevil world traveler who reveled in her independence. We’ll talk with Maggie about the power of seeing the world, and what she sees in the world-and we know you’ll come away being as glad as we are that she’s writing what she’s writing.Domesticating fear changed Shipstead’s life.

Through her life and her stories, Shipstead has learned very well that travel can be an adventure that pushes you, expands you, electrifies you. Unlike her literally high-flying heroine, Maggie herself is very down-to-earth, but like her she is wildly talented. In that, Great Circle is consistently, often breathtakingly, sound.” Not bad for a review, right? But it’s at the level of the sentence and the scene, the small but unforgettable salient detail, that books finally succeed or fail. One might say it soars….Here we have an action-packed book rich with character. One review, in the New York Times, said “ Great Circle starts high and maintains altitude. It’s the tale of two women, a century apart, one a daredevil aviatrix who travels the globe and the other an actress who portrays her much later. Her latest novel, her third, came out this past spring, and it’s called Great Circle. In a relatively short time, she’s had major success, both literary and commercial, in both nonfiction - for travel stories in publications including Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, the Atlantic, and the New York Times - and in fiction. Our guest today, Maggie Shipstead, is both a travel writer’s travel writer and a writer’s writer.

The great circle book