Back in June an enticing (unsolicited) package arrived from Harvill Secker promising all kinds of magic and mystery. It remained unopened for quite some time, not because I wasn't interested in the contents, but because it just looked too pretty to destroy.
Then, just a week or two ago, a beautiful invitation popped through the door offering "unlimited admission" to Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.
Join us at nightfall for punch and popcorn, it beckoned, and rendez-vous at St Pancras in the foyer of the Renaissance Hotel.
Well, of course, I couldn't resist an invite like that — just the promise of a peek inside the hotel was enough to attract me. So, in preparation for my visit, I thought I better read the book that had originally started all this intrigue. Before I knew it I had been swept away by a dazzling tale of magic and human circus tricks set during the Victorian era. (I am yet to come to the end of the novel, but I will review it shortly. In the meantime, do check dovegreyreader's and Jackie at Farm Lane Books for their thoughts.)
Even so, when I turned up to last night's event, I wasn't really expecting the suitable and appropriate mystery of it all. First, I couldn't find the room where it was staged, and even the security staff at the hotel seemed suitably perplexed. Eventually, after one chap emptied his pockets looking for a map and a list of event bookings, I was told to "walk up the staircase and take a right", only to find the staircase wasn't any old staircase, but a beautiful winding one with lush carpet and gorgeous bannisters. It was so big and impressive that trudging up it made me feel as if I was about two inches tall. I also felt decidedly under-dressed, because surely the best way to climb a staircase like this would be in a long Victorian gown where I could hear the swishing of my silk skirts as they trailed along behind me.
Never mind. Once in the room — ornately decorated with gold-gilded ceilings, Corinthian columns, mahogany woodwork and black marble fireplaces — I was handed a glass of delicious ice-cold punch. I hadn't so much as taken a sip through the straw when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder, and thinking it was someone who might know me, I turned around only to be met by air.
And then I spied the statue.
Yes, she was like that all night — and frightening the life out of guests as they walked in and she unexpectedly moved or touched them.
There was also a contortionist bending herself into all kinds of impossible positions on a chair.
But the highlight was the arrival of two very tall women dressed in full-on Victorian garb, who mingled with guests and chatted in character. I even had to help one straighten her silk skirt because "I do hate it when my skirt hoops show"!
There was plenty of popcorn on offer and loads of interesting guests. I met some lovely fiction-buyers from Waterstones (what a great job that would be), a BBC radio producer and spied one or two famous faces in the crowd (hello Arthur Smith — he asked me if I'd seen his bag — and Stuart Evers, who seems to pop up at all these book-related events although I'm yet to exchange a word with him).
I even worked up the courage, no doubt inspired by four-glasses of lovely gin-filled punch, to introduce myself to Natalie Haynes, who regularly appears on The Review Show. We had a lovely chat about all kinds of stuff, although I hope she didn't mind me grumbling about Kirsty Wark's inability to chair The Review Show properly — she just lets all the guests talk over the top of one another and it is rather a bugbear of mine!
Finally, after a lovely speech by Harvill Secker editor Rebecca Carter on how she discovered the book and gave her staff half a day to read it in order to do a deal by lunchtime, the author got up and thanked everyone for attending. Erin Morgenstern is a tiny slip of a thing and what's more she'd never left the USA until a couple of weeks ago, when she went to Canada and "apparently that doesn't count". How awesome to launch your book in a venue that actually features in the novel — she chose the hotel on the basis of a Google search, because she needed a Victorian era hotel next to a railway station!
Afterwards, I made a beeline and asked her to sign my copy. I think she was caught a little off guard — "Are we going to be doing any official signings?" she asked her editor — before I mentioned I was a blogger. Her reaction? "I LOVE BLOGGERS!"
Oh dear, I'll have to write a good review now...
