I admit, prior to reading The Troupe, I had no idea what vaudeville was all about. I had an idea in my head, based on implied fuzzy cultural memory, but it’s not something I’d ever taken a moment to actually look into. Having read Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus and paged through Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine, two circus-themed novels from 2011, I classified Bennett’s novel in my mind as another entrant in this newly popularized subgenre. Vaudville isn’t the same as a circus, but I was expecting a similar type of novel where the setting is as much a character as the people that populate it. The Troupe shattered those notions. Plot and character driven, set against a vaudville background, Bennett’s novel calls to mind the stylings of Neil Gaiman and lives up to the comparison.
Sixteen-year-old pianist George Carole has joined vaudeville to find Heironomo Silenus, the man he suspects to be his father. As he chases down Silenus’s troupe, he begins to understand that their performances are unique even for vaudeville and strange happenings follow in their wake. It’s not until after he joins them that George realizes the troupe isn’t simply touring, and Silenus is hiding a secret as old as time itself. Told in a tight third person voice, The Troupe follows George through his experience as a vaudeville act, a lost young man searching for direction, and a chess piece in an endless metaphysical war. Not surprisingly, the novel is divided into three parts that roughly correspond to each of those story arcs, although none are entirely resolved until the final pages.
Vaudville isn’t the same as a circus.
While I opine for more vaudeville, a place Bennett abandons far earlier in the novel than I was ready for him to, The Troupe is another tremendous success for this Shirley Jackson Award winner and Philip K. Dick Award nominated author. His prose is consistently excellent, making great use of dialogue and description that paint a haunting picture of his vaudevillian troupe, with George often acting a cipher for their complexities.
In many ways The Troupe is a difficult book to talk about. It’s a beautiful novel that resonates as a mystery, historical look-in, thriller, and family drama. Yet all of it feels somehow understated — spoken in hushed tones and cloaked in shadow. All of this lends an immense amount of gravitas to the somewhat ridiculous premise of a vaudeville troupe as keepers of an existential secret. But, like a sepia photograph manipulated in photoshop, Bennett adds his dashes of color, bringing things to the foreground for brilliant moments all the more intense for the contrasted palette behind it.
I dare a parent to finish [The Troupe] without a few tear-stained pages.
The most significant of these moments occurs when Bennett moves his tale from a supernatural thriller that asks big questions, to the intimate personal journey of George’s coming of age and his relationship to his father. A new dad himself, Bennett takes a hard look at the interactions of parent and child in an illuminating and oftentimes heart wrenching way. As the father of a two-year old little girl, I couldn’t stop the emotional response at the novel’s closing moments, leaving me breathless and in awe of Bennett’s ability to distill the most familiar of themes from the abstract.
Earlier in this review I compared the novel to something Neil Gaiman might write, and I believe the comparison is apt. I saw notes of American Gods and Neverwhere throughout, in the themes of gods and men, and the hidden worlds behind the curtain of reality. Maybe I’m wrong. Either way, I suggest reading The Troupe to find out. I dare a parent to finish it without a few tear-stained pages.
Written by Justin Landon
- Hugo Award
Winner
- About Aidan Moher
- Bibliography
Yeah, I need to read this. And I did think it was the same subgenre as Morgenstern and Valentine.
Every year there is one book I wish I read before posting my favorite books of the year, and this year it was The Troupe. I actually read it as part of a week i dedicated to reading and reviewing books on other people’s end of the year list.
One thing I have found interesting about The Troupe, when reading reviews, is that almost everybody compares it to different books they love, and each time I read the comparison, it feels right.
[…] a fantastical and revealing lens. “I saw notes of [Neil Gaiman] throughout,” said Justin Landon of Bennett’s The Troupe. “In the themes of gods and men, and the hidden worlds behind […]