The Greatest Show by Michael Downs (review)

179 BOOK NOTES The Greatest Show, by Michael Downs Louisiana State University Press, 2012 reviewed by Jennifer Wisner Kelly My father grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, in a workingclass neighborhood of Irish, Slavic, and German immigrants. In July of 1944, when he was two and a half years old, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town. My grandmother planned to take him to the show on July 6th , but when the big day arrived, it was so hot that she decided to wait. Lucky her. The Big Top burned to the ground that day, killing more than 150 people, mostly women and children. This brush with tragedy became part of our family lore—the Near Miss. How might everyone’s lives have shifted if Grandma had gone to the circus? In his outstanding first book of fiction, The Greatest Show, Michael Downs pays homage to the people of Hartford who did go to the circus that day—both those who survived and those who didn’t. He follows reverberations of the tragedy through families, neighborhoods, the city of Hartford, and decades of time. There are two strands of stories in The Greatest Show: those that follow Ania Liszak, a Polish immigrant, and her son, Teddy, who were badly burned in the fire; and those that follow Nick DiFiore, a boxer and family man whose sister was killed in the blaze. Both the Liszaks’ and DiFiores’ stories begin on that blistering July day in Hartford, but Downs takes them years into the future, exploring their lives at different stages and from different points of view. Read collectively , the stories give a kaleidoscopic perspective on Ania, Teddy, and Nick, each portrait richer and more nuanced for its multiple facets. The opening story, “Ania,” introduces both a central character and the circus tragedy. Ania Liszak is beautiful, restless , heavy with resentment at having to work as a housemaid during the war, and disappointed in her choice of husband. She steals tickets to take her three-year-old son, Teddy, to the circus, only to have this minor sin be punished exponentially when fire erupts: colorado review 180 At that moment, a flash of orange appeared on the other side of the big top, then rose up the wall of the tent. Ania thought it must be part of the performance, it seemed such a miraculous thing. But the crowd fell quiet, and then a thunder rumbled from all around and someone yelled ‘Fire!’ and the thunder exploded, flames charging up and across the billowing roof of the tent, people rushing from the bleachers, knocking chairs underfoot. A trapeze artist jumped from his platform, and Ania watched him twist through air to the sudden ground. Downs has the writing chops to handle a scene like this—the tent on fire, the confusion, the gore of burned flesh—and he doesn’t let us look away. It is an exacting description that conjures the tragedy in a visceral way. Yet Downs does not allow the horrors that he has so proficiently described to take over the soul of his story. “Ania” is not about the circus; it’s about, naturally enough, Ania Liszak. Ania’s brush with death and her and Teddy’s pain-filled recoveries are merely a focusing lens through which we watch the evolution of Ania’s troubled relationship with her husband. In Downs’s nimble hands, “Ania” is a complex and poignant exploration of the nature of marital love. The linked structure of The Greatest Show allows Downs to convey the consequences of the circus fire over the course of a lifetime. And so we see Ania again several times in the future through the eyes of strangers and of her beloved son. In “Elephant,” a grown-up Teddy describes his mother this way: “Mama wanted not to be simple. She kept secrets. She spent afternoons alone in her sewing room with the door closed. . . . From her I learned that the redeeming currency of old pain is drama.” In another story (“Mrs. Liszak”), we learn that Ania became a town eccentric in her old age: “She had been burned in a famous fire years ago, people said. Now...