(The ``Invisible Circus,'' one character explains, was a late-'60s ``be-in'' that ``was all about watching ourselves happen,'' and Faith embraced this celebration of spontaneity.) But Faith lost faith-in 1968 when, on a trip with her boyfriend, she mysteriously fell from a cliff in Italy. Their father, a frustrated artist, lived vicariously through the aptly named elder girl Faith learned to please him by taking extravagant physical risks, and after his death, her apparent free-spiritedness masked the same desperate need to impress her peers. As a child, Phoebe O'Connor felt less vital than her sister Faith. With its coolly graceful prose and mastery of narrative, “The Invisible Circus” is an unforgettable first novel by a writer of uncommon ability.Suicide's undiminished impact on a family informs Egan's poignant first novel, the tale of an 18-year-old retracing her older sister's doomed excursion through Europe. And when Faith’s old lover joins Phoebe to retrace those last days in Italy, Phoebe glimpses the human price that her sister paid in following her uncompromising quest for personal liberation. But instead of the millennial excitement that Faith had sensed in 1960s Europe, Phoebe encounters disappointment and ennui. Once in Europe, Phoebe follows the itinerary Faith spelled out in postcards from her fatal trip, landing in London, living in a hostel in Amsterdam, taking a tab of LSD in Paris.
To Phoebe, Faith epitomizes the youthful, chaotic freedom of the Sixties, and imitating her becomes Phoebe’s way of trying to elevate herself from a life that seems drab and unsatisfying compared to the vivid spectacle that was Faith’s. Phoebe O’Connor, 18, runs off to Europe seeking answers about the tragedy that has haunted her family for eight years: the sudden dead of her older sister Faith while in Italy.
In this breathtaking debut, Jennifer Egan brings to life the seductive pull of that era as it exerts itself on two sisters, separated by a decade, who take enormous risks to personify its ideals. The hope and heartbreak of the Sixties still linger in America’s consciousness.
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