THE CIRCUS IN WINTER
CATHY DAY
Harcourt, Inc., 275 pages, $23.00
Reviewed by Marie Jordan Giordano

Jennie Dixianna is a high flying circus aerialist who swings from a rope with a torn raw and bloody wrist in her Spin of Death, and the audience cheers as she descends from the rope, hand over bloodstained hand. She is but one of the wretched characters depicted in this work of fiction by Cathy Day. Proud, miserable and dissociated from the rest of the world, Day’s circus performers in the 1880’s lived desperate lives cursed and comforted by horrible living conditions, alcohol, sex, sickness and death.

Ollie Hofstadter, the son of alcoholic elephant trainer Hans Hofstadter, murdered by his prize elephant, had written on his tombstone, "May All Your Days Be Circus Days." As we glimpse into the personal lives of Alligator Man, Monkey Lady, Lobster Boy and Chicky, the last of the Boela Tribe, and their piteous and damned wives and children, Hofstadter’s epitaph becomes a curse rather than the cheery familiar ringmaster’s closing benediction. There is not a single happy or fulfilled life in this book of linked stories behind the scenes of a rough and tumble third rate circus just prior to the turn of the century.

Day’s circus is not the greatest show on earth. She has, instead, in THE CIRCUS IN WINTER, produced a spectacular fictive performance of the lives of the hapless, tragic characters associated with the early days of circus in America. From the wealthy, lonely owner of the amateur Porter circus to wretched Sugar Church who became Jungle Goolah Boy and kept in a cage to grunt, growl and peck at customers, this book dispels all romantic notions of the circus.

Day’s book is not the first to penetrate behind the scenes of the Big Top, for many books on the circus and freak shows have been published in the last one hundred years. What makes Day’s collection of stories a singular success is her deft use of language and the psychological excursions she takes into the lives of her characters.

The old time circuses traveled in bright painted rail cars stopping in towns like Middletown, Ohio; Radford, Virginia; Ottumwa, Iowa; Leadville, Colorado and Lima, Indiana where the Porter Circus wintered. Day writes, "For a night or two, the circus people glittered on dangling silver webs, and smiled sitting atop their roaring beasts. When the shows were over, they dropped canvas and, deep in the night, paraded silently back to the waiting train. And always there was this danger: that in the morning, the towns of Middletown, Radford, Ottumwa, and Leadville would awaken to empty beds, their wayward sons and daughters disappeared."

To the uninitiated, the life on the road with the circus represented a life dangerous and exciting, rife with adventure and romance. Superstition had it that the circus swallowed up the poor unsuspecting misfit, and in many cases it did. The circus in all its grit and sorrow, provided home, sustenance and family for many whom normal society tossed off as so much garbage.

Day’s book of linked stories suggests that perhaps we are all living circus lives. Maybe we’re not sword swallowers or jumping around in cages with tigers, but our scrapbooks and photo albums bear witness to our vagabond lives. We pitch our tents somewhere and call it home. We make families of friends, lovers and neighbors and when that doesn’t work for us, we move on the next place. No place is home and every place is home, and we’re our own circus.

Jennie, the high flying aerialist, suffering with the flesh of her wrist torn down to the bone is simply doing her job. Mrs. Ford, the wife of the circus’ general agent, falls in love with a handsome painter who paints hideous circus murals on every room in her house and has an affair with Jennie, the bloody-wristed aerialist in Mrs. Ford’s own bed.

The absence of happy or light moments could be a flaw, but Day keeps the reader’s interest with graceful sentences, lovely imagery and surprising insight. She’s a wonderful writer with an epiphany on every other page. The reader can smell the hay and shiver in the biting night air, shudder through the unwanted pregnancies, and even sigh with the ill fated loves and senseless deaths.

Marie (Jordan) Giordano is author of the novel, "I Love You Like a Tomato," published by Forge Books.