The Circle by katherena vermette
“The concept was simple. You sit a bunch of people in a circle—everyone who hurt, everyone who got hurt, all affected—and let them share. Some people, it helped them heal, for sure. Others went in angry and left a different kind of angry.“
The Circle is such a fitting title for this book, the third sister book to The Break & The Strangers. Finishing this book felt like the closing of a circle. The families and relationships that were torn open and investigated throughout the previous books, and through their interconnected traumas, found their way back together (in various ways.)
I love katherena vermette’s writing style. Alternating from different points of views, going back and forth in time but knowing which points are the most important, and bring it back together at just the right moments is a beautiful skill.
The Circle continues to bring the reader into deep thought about the same themes as the previous books. How do you judge the way someone responds to trauma? What does real support look like? What can we do when the pain is systemic and ancestral, not just a quick problem to be fixed? How do you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped? What do we owe to family, and how do we define it? What is the role of a matriarch and what is the result when that is taken away?
You could read it as a stand-alone novel and it would be powerful, but having read all 3, I would recommend reading them together and having the full context to really engage with her work.
The Circle also has two different chapters with distinct format shifts, which as a reader felt really jarring and force you to think of why is this moment, or this character, so different?
It’s a heavy book so if you find yourself triggered easily, check all the content warnings. That being said, it’s a beautiful novel and a really important work.
Reading Journal Questions
Why do you think she chose 'The Circle' as the title?
What message do you think she was trying to send by having the situation with Jake unfold as it did?
How did the formatting shifts For Ben & Kyle's sections impact you while reading?
If you are Indigenous, what did you think about the commentary on binaries in Ceremony?
If you are not Indigenous, how did the LGBTQ2s+ representation add to the novel, specifically in terms of matriarchy as a theme?
