Poles apart

Great Circle Maggie Shipstead Doubleday, £16.99

Grand, audacious and completely engrossing, this epic adventure story cuts back and forth between two women born nearly a century apart.

Aviator Marian Graves disappeared without trace in Antarctica in 1950 with her navigator Eddie Bloom when attempting to fly round the world via the North and South Poles.

As a young girl, Hadley Baxter read Marian’s published logbook and was fascinated to learn that Marian, like her, lost her parents in early childhood. Both girls were left to kindly but feckless uncles.

Marian and her twin brother Jamie grew up in rural Montana. Out riding one day, Marian is impressed by show planes swooping down low over her head and she determines to become a pilot. She leaves school aged 14, reluctantly allowing a bootlegger to finance her

obsession. In return, feisty, fierce Marian finds herself trapped at 17 in an abusive marriage and estranged from Jamie. Though it is inevitable that Marian will escape, it is far from clear how.

After Hadley becomes a world-famous film star, she also finds herself trapped. She has fallen from favour in Hollywood after her messy private life proved at odds with her vapid screen roles. Playing Marian is a golden opportunity to break free and show her full potential as an actress. But she is also compelled to find out more about Marian’s life

– and death.

With this ambitious, wide-ranging and psychologically insightful novel, Shipstead has pulled off a tour de force.