One Passion

Rose Vitkovskis is a lifelong circus performer and mother of five children. Her time in the circus has been a mix of familial community and economic uncertainty, and she couldn't imagine life any other way. But when a natural disaster destroys the circus, Rose ends up in Brisbane, Australia, where she starts film school, but has trouble adjusting to civilian life. However, she is soon discovered by a producer and sells the rights to her story, allowing her to restore the circus to its former glory and reunite all her friends. Matvejs's debut reads like thinly veiled memoir masking as fiction. The author's experience as a circus performer is apparent on every page, and this realism will be appreciated by readers. However, the narrative meanders and is repetitive, the dialogue is stilted, and the prose is tedious. While Matvejs clearly has a fascinating story to tell, she fails to present it in a compelling way.