Searching for the truth about death and life, Phoebe follows Faith' s trail, and discovers it is larger and darker than one death. Living in San Francisco, Phoebe is obsessed by the memory of her older sister, Faith, a flower child who died in Italy in 1970. In the summer of 1978, 18-year-old Phoebe is too young to know the 1960s but old enough to feel its influence.

This spellbinding novel introduced Egan’s remarkable ability to tie suspense with deeply insightful characters and the nuances of emotion.

In order to find out the truth about Faith’s life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith’s lost generation. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In Jennifer Egan’s highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O’Connor, age eighteen. About the Author:īook Description Paperback. With its coolly graceful prose and mastery of narrative, The Invisible Circus is an unforgettable first novel by a writer of uncommon ability. 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.

The invisible circus by jennifer egan