Americans have been going to Europe for answers almost since Europeans first settled here. If Europeans came to America for economic and political freedoms, Americans made the trip back over the Atlantic for other reasons. Europe was not only an intellectual center but a place where its inhabitants had discovered how to live life -- witness such migrations by Americans as the Lost Generation of the 1920s.
In Jennifer Egan's adroit first novel, the chief protagonist, an 18-year-old woman named Phoebe O'Connor, is looking for different kinds of answers from Europe. It is 1978, and Phoebe has just graduated from high school in San Francisco. And she is haunted by the death of her older sister, Faith.
Faith, seven years older than Phoebe, had been among the early San Francisco hippies. At the age of 14, she had started hanging around the flower children of Haight-Asbury, taking up with a free spirit named Wolf and immersing herself in the burgeoning counterculture. ("The Invisible Circus" refers to a hippie hangout similar to the old Fillmore or Avalon in San Francisco).
While scarcely out of high school, Faith and Wolf took off to Europe for more adventure. They roamed from city to city, country to country, living the bohemian life. And Faith would send insouciant letters home, indicating that she truly was living life on the edge.
But then Faith died in Italy in November 1970. Someone said she had jumped off a cliff. She was 17 and Phoebe only 10.
Now, 7 1/2 years later, Phoebe can't get Faith's death out of her mind. She's troubled by the circumstances of her demise -- was it an accident, a suicide or even a murder? -- and there are many attendant issues she still hasn't resolved.
As young children, the two sisters and brother Barry had ceaselessly vied for the attention of their father, a part-time painter who pined for his erstwhile libertine life while he settled for a corporate career with IBM. His death, when Phoebe was but 5, seared the family permanently: They all grieved, but separately, and the family was nearly torn asunder.
Faith was the favorite in the family, the apple of their father's eye. She was the rebel, the adventurous one; Phoebe was cautious and introspective, a virgin still at 18. Her situation is such that she doesn't want to smoke, but envies those who do. Ms. Egan writes:
"Phoebe pictured herself in the eyes of her peers as half ghostly, a transparent outline whose precise movements were impossible follow. During free periods she had no place to go. Often she simply wandered the halls, feigning distraction and hurry, afraid even to pause for fear that her essential solitude would be exposed."
Finally, she impetuously takes off for Europe. With her she takes a clutch of Faith's postcards. Phoebe will retrace her steps, hoping to make sense of her sister's life -- and ultimately of her own.
Once in Europe, though, Phoebe discovers that following her sister doesn't mean she can lead the same life. She simply can't break through her own reserve -- where Faith would write of one audacious adventure after another, Phoebe spends much of her time alone in her hotel rooms, aching with loneliness and feeling more despondent.
She's also aware that the hippie lifestyle that Faith had so eagerly embraced had been played out. In San Francisco, the Haight was a hollow and dangerous place. In Amsterdam, Phoebe encounters Karl, an aging hippie who claims to have met Faith years before. When Phoebe asks if he's nostalgic for the '60s, Karl responds cryptically:
"You want peace, finally you take guns to find it. Use drugs for opening your mind so everything will come inside -- now you think only where to get more smack. You love to live, but you die and die and die -- so many dead, from that time. Like your sister."
It's when Phoebe meets up with Wolf in Munich that she finally starts to get some answers. Wolf has remained in Europe, using his German-language skills to get a translating job. He's engaged to marry a German woman. But he also keeps thinking about Faith. Together, he and Phoebe try to make sense of her death, and the way she lived her life.
"The Invisible Circus" deals with a number of compelling themes -- grief, parent-child and sibling relationships, finding a sense of self. Ms. Egan, whose short stories have appeared in the New Yorker and GQ, at times provides too many convenient plot twists and makes a few points all too obvious. Still, she infuses this book with considerable intelligence and sensitivity. It's a fine debut.
Mr. Warren's reviews appear Mondays in The Sun.
BOOK REVIEW
Title: "The Invisible Circus"
Author: Jennifer Egan
Publisher: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Length, price: 338 pages, $22.50