Is all of life a circle? That is a major theme of this sprawling great epic of a novel, ranging for more than a century from 1909, centred on the life of fictional early aviator, Marian Graves.

The story explores the journal she kept while attempting to fly in a huge circle from pole to pole and the fictionalised book based on that journey. There is also the subsequent film, and in particular the life of the actresss playing the main role.

Those stories, of Marian and her twin brother, Jamie, rescued from a shipwreck then raised by an uncle; and the actress, Hadley Baxter, orphaned when her parents’ light aircraft crashed into Lake Superior, also raised by an uncle, have synchronicity.

Shipstead has written feelingly, almost ecstatically, about flying. Her words echo those of a World War II Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, Gillespie Magee, killed in December 1941, who wrote about flying in his poem, ‘High Flight’, famously ending: ‘Put out my hand and touched the face of God.’

The author’s research into early aviation is breath-taking; as well as that of bootlegging liquor from Canada during the USA’s Prohibition; the female pilots ferrying aircraft around England in World War II; and finally, the epic 1950 circular flight by Marian Graves.

And then there’s the troubled Hadley, a successful child actress turned epic series heroine, with a turbulent personal life. She first read about Marian Graves when a child.

There are circles within circles, of relationships in one generation branching out to the next, all contained in the kaleidoscope of interlocking stories devised by Shipstead so that the reader does not become confused, or tired, but instead does not want the novel to end.

The author’s own extensive travels colour the way she describes her settings, from bleak Alaska to tropical Hawaii and the high country of New Zealand’s South Island. It’s a circle that seems never-ending.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville