Image: Circus Sideshow, Georges Seurat, 1888
Perhaps it was my adolescent obsession with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and especially the weird and wonderful circus track "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite." (If you don't know this song, you're required to listen to it. It's mandatory). But I've always been fascinated by the creepy carnival.
My passion for grotesque circus stuff (a strange passion, I know) inspired an ongoing obsession with weird sideshow history, from traveling mountebanks to the horrors of dentistry past, and especially to the history of stage magic, which has played a major role in my own research.
I also have a real soft spot for atmosphere. For the books that don't just present characters and plot, but settings that scintillate with some dreamy otherworldliness. And I'm not talking about fantasy set in another world, or horror and supernaturalism set in this one. Nor just the setting that acts as a "character," as they say in Lit 101. No, this is the setting that takes you into a mood. And perhaps nowhere is it more on display than the ambience of the strange represented in circus-adjacent fiction.
Enter this carnivalcore collection. Inspired by Ray Bradbury's timeless tale Something Wicked this Way Comes, the collection highlights that uncanny magic of circus and carnival lore. In many ways, this collection is an extension of the creepy curiosities books in one of our other featured collections. Read about it here.
Bradbury's book is known as one of the classic coming-of-age novels of the century. Think Stephen King's The Stand, but with supernatural carousels and houses of mirrors. (So really quite different, actually). Something Wicked tells the tale of best friends Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway. The two find their small-town world upended when a bizarre carnival comes to town. As their last names would suggest, Jim and Will represent the proverbial two-sided coin, with Jim innately drawn towards the dark world of this mystic troupe and poor Will having to constantly drag him back from the brink. Bradbury's book inspired countless later authors and works, whether explicitly or implicitly or implicitly.
Take, for example, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. Morgenstern has not directly cited Bradbury as an influence (as far as I have seen) but her work is certainly part of its lineage. People LOVE this book. It maintains a solid 4.0 on Goodreads. Do you have any idea how many books only dream of achieving that coveted 4 but are doomed to languish forever somewhere in the 3s?? And it's a great book. If you're looking for that dark circus whimsy, you will find it in droves here.
Unlike Bradbury, Morgenstern sets her circus in the Victorian era, which is the perfect place for it because obviously that was circus/carnival/mountebank central, I say as a literally certified Victorianist. Like many such books, the story involves "real" magic rather than the sleight-of-hand illusion of stage magicians. The plot is arguably less important than the atmosphere, but you should definitely buy it and then feel free to argue with me. Morgenstern has cited the film The Prestige as an influence, and I would highly recommend pairing them. That being said, I think the movie is honestly just too long. Which is a shame because it's otherwise great. There's a payoff though so if you find yourself picking up your phone halfway through maybe take a break and finish tomorrow. (P.S. Shopify was being incredibly weird about letting me put a link on this pic and I don't have all day, so you can find the book here).
If Morgenstern was influenced by The Prestige, you might find even more of those vibes in Amiee Gibbs's Carnivale of Curiosities. This is a dark one in the best way. Gibbs is new on the scene, but if this is any indication I'm excited to read more of her work in the future. The writing drips with Victorian allure and the gothic undertones begin to reveal themselves in the very first pages.
I am nothing if not obsessed with Victorians, but if you're looking for something more modern, try Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. This book received much adulation when it was released and it maintains a significant cult following, but it has regrettably fallen to the wayside in recent years.
A word of warning: this is a weird one. And a horrifying one. I mean. Wow. If you want something a little less weird and horrifying maybe stick with the previous three. The title comes from a particularly grotesque circus act of ages past, when the circus "geek" would literally chew the head off of a live chicken for the audience. Yes, people used to watch this. But think about what we watch on TV now. The book follows the lives of a renowned lady geek's children, all of whom were engineered by their parents through an assortment of pre-natal drugs to come out as circus freaks. This incredibly twisted family drama contains ample body horror so don't say I didn't warn you. Seriously. Don't go into this book unprepared. If the Victorian books on the list evoke films like The Prestige, this one in certain ways reminds me of the Mexican-Italian horror film Santa Sangre which weirdly also came out in 1989. Quite a year for truly disturbing circus horror.
The books of this collection represent only a handful of the amazing spooky circus books out there. Stay tuned as we eventually expand on this repertoire!
But in the mean time, put on your calliope music (and your mandatory Beatles track) and settle in with some of the most atmospheric fiction and strange nonfiction the Golden Bough can conjure.
Check out the whole collection!