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The Invisible Circus Paperback – October 9, 2007
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The highly acclaimed debut novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Good Squad follows two sisters in the 1970s—one lost, one seeking—on "a trip that takes the reader through stunning emotional terrain" (The New Yorker).
The political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O’Connor, age eighteen, in 1978. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. 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.
This spellbinding novel introduced Egan’s remarkable ability to tie suspense with deeply insightful characters and the nuances of emotion.
- Print length338 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor
- Publication dateOctober 9, 2007
- Dimensions7.98 x 5.3 x 0.77 inches
- ISBN-109780307387523
- ISBN-13978-0307387523
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Review
“Mesmerizing. . . . Told with great assurance and power. . . . Egan portrays the sisters with a quiet, heartbreaking clarity.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Wonderful. . . . Words glide through her fingers and enter the pores like cool San Francisco fog.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Brilliant in its authenticity and overwhelming passion.”
—The Boston Globe
“A trip that takes the reader through stunning emotional terrain.”
—The New Yorker
About the Author
Jennifer Egan is the author of four novels: A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus; and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her husband and sons in Brooklyn.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Product details
- ASIN : 0307387526
- Publisher : Anchor; Reprint edition (October 9, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 338 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780307387523
- ISBN-13 : 978-0307387523
- Item Weight : 10 ounces
- Dimensions : 7.98 x 5.3 x 0.77 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #759,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,480 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #35,817 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #40,484 in American Literature (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jennifer Egan was born in Chicago, where her paternal grandfather was a police commander and bodyguard for President Truman during his visits to that city. She was raised in San Francisco and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and St. John’s College, Cambridge, in England. In those student years she did a lot of traveling, often with a backpack: China, the former USSR, Japan, much of Europe, and those travels became the basis for her first novel, The Invisible Circus, and her story collection, Emerald City. She came to New York in 1987 and worked an array of wacky jobs while learning to write: catering at the World Trade Center; joining the word processing pool at a midtown law firm; serving as the private secretary for the Countess of Romanones, an OSS spy-turned-Spanish countess (by marriage), who wrote a series of bestsellers about her spying experiences and famous friends.
Egan has published short stories in many magazines, including The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta and McSweeney's. Her first novel, The Invisible Circus, came out in 1995 and was released as a movie starring Cameron Diaz in 2001. Her second novel, Look at Me, was a National Book Award Finalist in 2001, and her third, The Keep, was a national bestseller. Also a journalist, Egan has written many cover stories for the New York Times Magazine on topics ranging from young fashion models to the secret online lives of closeted gay teens. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and her 2008 story on bipolar children won an Outstanding Media Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.
Photo credit Pieter M. Van Hattem
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The teenage woman protagonist is both more sentimental and more sincere than the protagonists of Egan's later books. It's a first novel, and through its first half the protagonist seems precious. She moans. She whines about her upper-middle class life. She spends the better part of whole chapters feeling sorry for herself. Readers are supposed to relate to her because she, in many senses, is the novelist.
And, yet, despite the contrast to Egan's later stylistic choices, "Invisible Circus" builds from an almost maudlin beginning to an engaging and revealing conclusion. Once the protagonist reaches Europe and begins retracing the path of her long-lost sister, her neediness slowly begins to dissipate. The novel finally reaches its stride. The stakes rise, and the momentum makes the book hard to put down.
For some reason I see a kinship between this book and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "I could almost see where the wave crested, and fell back." Except this isn't Hunter Thompson's story. It's his meek little sister trying to escape his shadow. Or something like that. Sort of. Okay, it's a stretch, but there is thematic overlap.
And Phoebe -- the sister and main character -- is chasing ghosts. She is chasing the ghost of a beautiful thing that she never experienced. A beautiful thing that seemed to destroy everyone who got close to it. She is also chasing the ghost of her father, and her older sister, both of whom seemed to have gotten to go to the circus while she didn't.
I found this book after reading A Visit From the Goon Squad on a friend's recommendation. I liked that enough to search out other works from the same author. This book feels softer, younger, less edgy than Good Squad, but is equally well rendered. Like Goon Squad, the characters are drawn in the finest black ink, rendered in uncanny precision.
There's also a great romance in there. Great for its vividness and its oh-so-human plausibility.
Highly recommended.
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Al centro di “Invisible Circus” è la storia di Phoebe, una diciottenne di San Francisco, perseguitata dalla memoria della morte suicida della sorella maggiore di cinque anni, Faith - elevata a modello da imitare, amatissimo ma anche invidiato - e del percorso attraverso il quale la stessa Phoebe riuscirà a superare le proprie ossessioni, elaborare i propri lutti, rievocare più serenamente la memoria della sorella e dell’infanzia, accingersi ad una vita propria non più dominata dalla convinzione che “tutte le cose che desiderava maggiormente appartenessero già a qualcun altro”.
La storia si svolge tra il giugno e il novembre del 1978: ma l’evocazione dei ricordi della ragazza, che attraversa tutta la narrazione, dispone progressivamente le tante tessere che forniranno un disegno compiuto della vita e dei legami familiari della protagonista con Faith, il fratello Barry, la madre e il padre.
Anche il padre – cui Faith era legata da un rapporto privilegiato – è deceduto prematuramente. Una perdita resa ancor più dolorosa, per i tre ragazzi, dalla con-vinzione che la sua morte segnasse l’epilogo di una vita in cui la sua vocazione artistica avesse dovuto essere sacrificata, per il benessere della famiglia, all’impegno in un lavoro sicuro e remunerativo quanto detestato. Sarà anche questo lutto a spingere nel 1970 Faith, diciassettenne, ad avventurarsi in un viaggio in Europa, che si concluderà drammaticamente sulle scogliere di Corniglia, borgo delle Cinque Terre, nel novembre di quell’anno.
Phoebe non riesce a darsi pace per il destino di quella sorella così piena di vita e partecipe della ribellione giovanile degli anni ’60, tra sit-in, manifestazioni universitarie, marce della pace, ed eventi entrati nella leggenda del mondo hippy, come quello organizzato dai Diggers in San Francisco denominato “Invisible Circus” - una tre giorni di musica, danze, rappresentazioni improvvisate, sesso e droga. Vorrebbe saperne di più, comprenderne le ragioni di quella morte. E alla fine del giugno 1978, insofferente della convivenza con la madre, dopo la partenza di Barry, Phoebe decide di ripetere quel pellegrinaggio europeo seguendo fedelmente, tappa per tappa, le tracce lasciate dalla sorella attraverso numerose quanto laconiche cartoline che Phoebe aveva diligentemente raccolto e conservato. Londra, Amsterdam, il Belgio, Reims, Parigi le tappe del viaggio - segnate dal susseguirsi delle esperienze di Phoebe, dai suoi incontri con droga, sesso, misticismo - che la porteranno infine a Monaco. Qui incontra, fortuitamente, Wolf, il ragazzo di Faith che l’aveva accompagnata nella sue peregrinazioni europee, sino a che, a Berlino, le loro strade s’erano divise. Ed è assieme ad un Wolf in parte riluttante ma al tempo stesso deciso a non lasciarla andare da sola, che Phoebe compie, alla volta di Corniglia, la parte finale e decisiva del viaggio, per venire a capo degli enigmi .
La narrazione si svolge prevalentemente dal punto di vista di Phoebe, in terza persona, con un largo ricorso al flusso di coscienza. Non mancano però incursioni improvvise di un narratore esterno onnisciente, così come dal punto di vista di altri personaggi, sia pure filtrati dalla percezione di Phoebe. E certamente anche l’abilità nel gestire questi repentini mutamenti di prospettiva, unitamente a quella nell’intrecciare tempo del racconto e tempo della storia, eventi attuali ed eventi trascorsi in fasi del passato non ordinate cronologicamente, il ricorso continuo a dissolvenze appena avvertibili o, viceversa, quasi spaesanti, sono uno dei fattori, nei modi della narrazione, che contribuisce a renderla particolarmente avvincente.
E se la storia è certamente incentrata sulle storie individuali di Phoebe e dei diversi personaggi a lei legati, essa acquisisce un più ampio respiro grazie alla sua ambientazione, efficacemente tratteggiata, nell’epoca dei movimenti giovanili dei tardi anni sessanta, con riferimento alle loro speranze, aspettative, volontà di cambiamenti radicali, come anche alle loro delusioni, ai velleitarismi, e anche alle degenerazioni distruttive e autodistruttive che ne coinvolsero taluni settori.
A costituire il tessuto della trama del romanzo, oltre agli eventi, partecipano in termini sostanziali il succedersi e l’evolversi di riflessioni, percezioni, presentimenti, intuizioni, sogni, fantasie, angosce, e tutto ciò, insomma, che contribuisce a definire stati d’animo talvolta affatto candidi, spesso complessi, non di rado contraddittori, attraverso i quali si delineano i caratteri dei personaggi.
Appare importante sottolineare, infine, il fatto che, quantunque temi e vicende potessero prestarvisi assai facilmente, non si verifica mai uno scivolamento nel sentimentalismo.
Un’ultima notazione riguarda l’appunto critico, mosso da qualcuno, secondo il quale gli sviluppi delle vicende nel romanzo si affidano non di rado all’intervento di coincidenze e casi fortuiti talmente improbabili da metterne a dura prova la credibilità. A me non sembra affatto, anzi: del resto, quante volte, nella vita di tutti noi, ci è capitato di imbatterci in combinazioni e casualità che son sembrate sfidare le realtà più romanzesche?
Following a blind impulse Phoebe sets out to follow her sister's postcard trail across Europe to the Italian cliff-top village where she killed herself. For much of the narrative she seems in danger of re-enacting her sister's fate. But Phoebe is less damaged than Faith, and more resilient: her insistence on learning the truth about Faith's life and death is in essence a quest for a health and wholeness that cannot be found by any other route.
This is a wonderfully readable book about the dynamics of a damaged family; a vivid prefiguration of the considerable achievement of 'A Visit from the Goon Squad'.