The Invisible Circus

The high ideals and inevitable compromises of the 1960s form the background to this acclaimed first novel. Phoebe O'Connor, eighteen years old in the summer of 1978, is too young to have known the sixties, but old enough to wistfully long for what is now past. Living in San Francisco with her mother, Phoebe has always been obsessed by the memory of her charismatic older sister, Faith, a passionate flower child who died in Italy in 1970. Searching for the truth about her death and life, Phoebe impulsively follows Faith's trail from San Francisco through Europe, culminating in the very place where she leapt to her death. The truth that Phoebe discovers on her journey is larger and darker than one death, going straight to the ambiguous heart of a generation that tried to follow its dreams of freedom. `Egan writes well about her chosen period, conveying its atmosphere of self-conscious decadence with unerring accuracy' The Times `A trip that takes the reader through stunning emotional terrain' New Yorker `A real page turner. Dramatic, suspenseful and beautifully written' Robert Stone