The Invisible Circus

I fought this book for a while. I'm not sure why. My goal was to reject it. A first novel--I'm too good for that, I thought. The 60s! I lived through that--there's nothing left to say about it. In the end, I lost the fight.

Phoebe starts off stuck in a familiar place, thinking she's the only one who's ever been there and simultaneously thinking she's never been anywhere. It's the kind of angst which has no solution inside of its self-definition. She goes looking in the totally wrong direction for relief--thinking there was somewhere outside of herself she needed to get to. What she finds is both unpredictable and inevitable. There! I didn't spoil anything!

Unlike many novels, films, tv shows, the psychology of the characters never seemed false, or only put there to make the story work. I believed everyone and everything. The tricks I expected to find, the places where I could point my finger and say, "nice plot device," freeing me from the spell, were absent. I was forced to go along with Phoebe on her quest, even as the other characters tried to stop her. We all failed. Like Phoebe, we are survivors so we had to fail and then we had to figure out what to do with our failure. Ms. Egan took the risks and didn't fail.

Jennifer Egan's intense coming of age story about a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her losses and move on with her life took hold of most my free time for the past three days, which I gave quite willingly.

It is the summer of 1978, and Phoebe, a recent high school graduate, is struggling to define her own life. Through a series of flashbacks, we meet her entire family, especially the father who died early of illness, and her sister Faith, who died tragically, not long afterwards. Both of these losses had a profound effect on Phoebe as a ten year old child, and now, eight years later, she resents her mother and brother Barry for being able to go on. Still worshiping Faith, Phoebe postpones college to take a trip, purposely the same itinerary Faith took to Europe with a boyfriend eight years ago. Phoebe, however, is all by herself. There are some harrowing, nail-biting moments, an interesting plot twist, but finally, Phoebe gets some answers to questions that are important to her about her sister's life and death. Just as important, Phoebe is creating her own story, not just living through and for her older sister. This is her closure and the beginning of the rest of her life.

Egan's writing is stunning, and the intricacies of the relationships within this family are well developed and intriguing. The backdrop of Faith's story, the turbulent 1960's, is described to great effect and makes this novel all the more fascinating.

I highly recommend this, in case that's not clear.