23 April, 2002: The Invisible Circus
Jennifer Egan's The Invisible Circus is a novel of the '70s, but it has all the flaws of the worst memoirs of the '60s (the fashion for which has, thankfully, passed). It is the story of two sisters, Beth and Faith. Beth is a high school senior whose entire existence revolves around the memories of her dead father, a failed artist turned computer programmer, and her sister, a wild child hippie who died in Europe ten years before the start of the novel. Beth has decided to go off and follow in Faith's footsteps. Part of the problem is that all the adult characters are left behind in the U.S., and Beth is just too resolutely adolescent to want to stay with on her tedious journey of discovery; her hero worship of her father and sister is believable but doesn't make for compelling reading. Part of it is that the truth about Faith's fateful summer in Europe is heavily foreshadowed and not really very shockng. Part of it is that this reads like a heavily workshopped first novel, with each chapter the smooth cadences, neatly turned phrases, and pat final lines of short stories that don't quite cohere into a whole. But most of it is because Faith, so beloved by Beth and by Faith's former boyfriend, who Faith meets along the way, was from all accounts insufferable. I think this might even be intentional on Egan's part, a little dig at the continuing fascination with the 1960s, but it was hard to sympathize with Beth's investigation into how her sister died when you keep wondering how Faith's friends and relatives kept from choking her.