- Date Published:
2021 - Length:
600 pages—Listening Time: 25 hours 16 minutes - Genre:
Historical Fiction - Setting:
1909-2014; Montana, Alaska, Washington, Los Angeles, London - Awards:
Booker Prize Shortlist 2021; Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2022; Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards Finalist Fiction 2022; Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction Longlist Fiction 2022; BookTube Prize Bronze Fiction 2022; Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Longlist 2022; The Times London and Sunday Times Best Books of the Year Finalist Fiction 2021; Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee Historical Fiction 2021; Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine Shortlist 2023; HWA Crown Awards Shortlist Gold 2022; NPR: Books We Love 2021; Boston Globe Best Book Fiction 2021; Amazon.com Best Books 2021; Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Historical Fiction 2021; The Guardian Book of the Day 2021-05-26; Publishers Weekly's Summer Reads Listed Fiction 2021; Esquire Best Books of the Year So Far Fiction 2021; Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List Selection 2022;hicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults Selection 2021; Read with Jenna 2021-05 2021; King County Library System Best Books Fiction Books 2021; NPR Best Book 2021; Time Magazine's Must Read Books of the Year 2021; Indie Next List 2021; Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year Fiction 2021; BookPage Best Books Fiction 2021 - Languages:
Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish - Sensitive Aspects:
Sexual assault and rape, child sexual abuse, adult/minor sexual relationships, incest, domestic and intimate partner violence, emotional abuse and manipulation, marital rape, child abuse and neglect, graphic war violence and wartime deaths, murder, alcoholism and other substance abuse, abortion and forced pregnancy, death of parents and other close family, grief and complicated bereavement, suicide and suicidal ideation, postpartum depression, sexism and misogyny, racism, xenophobia and hate crime, sexual promiscuity and explicit sexual content, plane crashes and aviation disasters, shipwrecks and drowning, poverty and situational deprivation - Movie:
Great Circle is being adapted into a television series with the production company Picturestart with Shipstead herself involved in the production as an executive producer. - Recommended for Book Club:
Yes! (although it may be too long for some groups)
You know that rare kind of book that takes over your life for a while—the one you start talking to instead of just about? That was me with Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. I listened to the audiobook, and somewhere between Marian Graves navigating her wild, reckless ambition and Hadley Baxter stumbling through Hollywood gloss, I found myself muttering responses like an overinvested friend. (“Oh no, Marian, what are you thinking?”) It’s been a long time since a novel made me behave like that—and honestly, I loved every minute.
Great Circle is a sprawling, time-bending adventure that somehow lives and breathes through its characters more than its plot. That’s saying something, because the plot itself—spanning prohibition-era Montana, WWII-era skies, and modern-day Los Angeles—has the scope of an epic. But the reason it works isn’t the scale; it’s the people. Every character here, from headline to footnote, carries a spark of Shipstead’s deep empathy and psychological sharpness. They feel real, messy, and entirely human.
There’s Marian, the daredevil aviator chasing the horizon like it owes her something. There’s Jamie, her sensitive twin brother, struggling to quiet the chaos she thrives on. And then there’s Hadley, an actress with her own bruises, tasked with resurrecting Marian’s story decades later on screen. Somehow, Shipstead balances all of this without losing a single emotional thread. You don’t just follow their lives—you get absorbed into them, like you’re watching from the co-pilot’s seat.
If you’ve ever loved a story that made you forget everything else—laundry, deadlines, dinner—it’s that kind of ride. Great Circle isn’t a quick fling of a book. It’s an epic relationship: magnetic, infuriating, and impossible to put down.
At its heart, Great Circle follows the wild, looping journey of Marian Graves, a woman who seems destined to live with one foot in the air and the other barely touching the ground. Born in 1914, Marian’s life begins in chaos—a shipwreck, an absent father, and a childhood in rugged Montana with her twin brother, Jamie. The two grow up under the shaky care of their uncle Wallace, a struggling artist and unreliable caretaker.
From the moment she sees her first airplane, Marian knows she wants to fly. It’s not ambition—it’s oxygen. Her life becomes one long pursuit of altitude, from early flying lessons with a mysterious benefactor to daring stunts and dangerous ferrying missions during World War II. Every chapter moves with that restless energy—she’s always chasing freedom, even when the world demands she stay grounded.
Running parallel, decades later, is Hadley Baxter’s story. She’s a grown up Hollywood child actress fresh off a career-scandal disaster. She is offered a chance to play Marian Graves in a biopic. At first, Hadley’s interest feels transactional—a way to repair her image—but as she digs deeper into Marian’s history, her fascination turns personal. Through her research, she starts to see echoes of her own fractured life in the fearless pilot’s story.
As the two narratives circle each other—Marian’s past and Hadley’s present—they trace the outlines of one remarkable life lived on its own terms. Marian’s final act, an ambitious attempt to fly around the world on a path that literally forms a great circle, gives the book its name and heartbeat. Whether she makes it or not becomes almost secondary to the journey itself: a lifetime spent reaching, falling, and rising again.
Readers are in for a treat with Great Circle for a lot of reasons, but here are the big ones that will really land for the right reader.
Sweeping, epic scope
This story stretches from a 1914 shipwreck to a 2014 Hollywood set, crossing continents, wars, and decades in between. If you love sinking into a world that feels huge and fully inhabited, this book gives you that immersive, multi-era sprawl. You move from rugged Montana to wartime Europe to glossy Los Angeles, and the book never feels like it’s showing off—it just unfolds, steadily and confidently, like a long flight path that makes complete emotional sense.
Deeply human characters
Marian, Jamie, Hadley, and even the side characters feel layered, prickly, and real in a way that makes it hard not to get totally absorbed in their lives. Their trauma, bad decisions, flashes of courage, and quiet compromises all feel earned rather than melodramatic. This is one of those novels where the characters are the heartbeat, not the “twists.” You’re invested because you care what happens to these people, not because you’re waiting for some big reveal.
A propulsive, emotionally charged plot
Even though it’s a long book, the story keeps moving: barnstorming flights, dangerous deals with a bootlegger, wartime missions, scandal, and an ambitious polar circumnavigation that anchors the whole arc. There’s always some new risk on the horizon. The dual timeline structure—with Marian’s past and Hadley’s present—creates a steady sense of momentum, as you watch their lives slowly intersect through the film about Marian’s final flight.
Rich themes without preachiness
The book digs into freedom, bodily autonomy, ambition, fame, and what it costs to live on your own terms, especially as a woman in a world that keeps trying to clip your wings. It raises big questions without pausing the story to deliver a lecture. You see the way different eras police women’s bodies and choices—Marian in the 1930s and 40s and Hadley in 2014—inviting you to draw your own connections between them.
Gorgeous, transportive writing
Maggie Shipstead’s prose is vivid without being showy; she can make a cockpit, a frozen airstrip, or a dingy apartment feel textured and real in just a few lines. If you enjoy language that has some muscle to it, you’ll find a lot to savor here. Scenes of flight, in particular, are written with such clarity and sensory detail that you feel the lift and danger right along with Marian.
Perfect for the “absorbed” reading mood
This is absolutely one of those books you end up talking to as you go, whether you’re listening on audio or turning pages at 2 a.m. The sheer immersion of the world and the intimacy with Marian’s inner life make that almost inevitable. If you’re in the mood for a book that can take over your brain for a while—one that you live with rather than just read—Great Circle fits that bill in the best possible way.
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Maggie Shipstead’s novels sweep readers into worlds of dazzling scope and emotional precision, blending adventure, artistry, and the intricacies of human connection in unforgettable, exquisitely written stories.
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Readers who loved Great Circle often want that same blend of sweeping scope, layered structure, and a complicated woman at the center of it all. Here are strong read‑alikes that echo its epic feel, aviation threads, or multi‑timeline storytelling.
Big, immersive epics
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Ursula Todd keeps dying and starting life over again in the first half of the twentieth century, giving a looping, experimental view of history, war, and fate that feels as expansive and absorbing as Marian's globe-spanning story. - A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
A writer in Canada finds a lost diary from a Japanese teenager, and the book braids their lives together across time and distance in a way that mirrors the dual Marian/Hadley structure and its questions about how stories survive.
Ambitious women and flight
- Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
This novel fictionalizes the life of Beryl Markham, an unconventional horse trainer and pilot in 1920s Kenya, capturing the same rugged landscapes, aviation danger, and restless, rule‑breaking female ambition that drove Marian. - Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams
A modern-day journalist investigates the disappearance of a legendary pilot in the 1940s, weaving together past and present in a mystery-tinged narrative that recalls the way Hadley digs into Marian’s myth.
Historical women pushing boundaries
- The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
Alma Whittaker, a nineteenth‑century botanist, devotes her life to science, travel, and ideas, offering another richly detailed, decades‑spanning portrait of a woman determined to live on her own terms. - The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
Three women codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II navigate friendship, betrayal, and love against a meticulously drawn historical backdrop, echoing the mix of war, danger, and intimate character work.
Multi‑timeline literary fiction
- Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Several characters in different centuries are linked by a single ancient text, and the novel moves between eras with a similarly intricate, braided structure and human‑scaled focus inside a huge narrative canvas. - The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Set in 1950s America, this road‑novel‑meets‑epic follows a group of young men on an odyssey‑like journey, delivering that same big, generous storytelling and richly textured sense of time and place.
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