num_pages: 295
description: The dark, seemingly glitzy world of an American traveling circus is the setting for Richard Schmitt's brilliant debut novel, The Aerialist. On the edge of Venice, Florida, lie the winterquarters—a circus in repose. One day Gary—who hasn't cared much what sort of job he's had—finds himself signing on as a circus hand.   Everyone has seen or heard of the wirewalker, the trapeze artist, and the clown, but there are others: The "twenty-four-hour man" who arrives in a town first to post arrows that point the way to the lot; the "bullhands" who remove the elephants' excrement out from under their tumultuous bodies; the "butchers" who distract the audience from the wonders on stage so that they might purchase a cotton candy or a plastic ray-gun. Gary becomes instantly familiar with this new life—riding in the circus train from one town to the next in the odd hours of the night. It is a life for which he has abandoned everything and nothing at all.  In story-like chapters, Richard Schmitt describes a hapless, magical existence in an American voice as starkly resonant as that of Richard Ford—and through his description of Gary's inevitable progression from circus hand to wirewalker, the circus emerges as a symbol of human aspiration.
language: English
title: The Aerialist
titlecomplete: The Aerialist
characters: Gary Ruden
genres: Fiction, Novels
ratings_count: 113
publisher: The Overlook Press