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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A good read with a slow beginning and an at-times frustrating main character. Enjoyed the tour through Europe though felt like some of the details could have been truncated. A bit long winded at times. Also, very focused on past events and flashbacks, which became tiresome after a while.
For my full review, click here.
First off, let me save you some time. Don’t watch the movie. It is awful.
The book, however...
Sentence by sentence this book is compelling. It’s over 300 pages and never felt too long or dragged out. Egan’s ability to take odd occurrences of human life and make them natural, but fateful is effortless.
The characters are all unique. The dialogue is also wonderful and believable. When Phoebe travels to Belgium and France, you can almost hear accents in the syntax of the words spoken by the characters she meets there.
A few people have expressed the only unbelievable part was the minor “romance” plot toward the end. I can certainly see how it feels separate from the rest of the book, but it still felt necessary in order for Phoebe to arrive at the place she does by the time the end of the novel comes.
It’s no A Visit From the Goon Squad. The sentences aren’t strong, golden hits, but instead flow one into the next. The overall topic is less focused, more a section of a life-story than a well thought out literary piece. But it reads beautifully and her ability to fit entire lives into a few pages or so is worth the read.
First off, let me save you some time. Don’t watch the movie. It is awful.
The book, however...
Sentence by sentence this book is compelling. It’s over 300 pages and never felt too long or dragged out. Egan’s ability to take odd occurrences of human life and make them natural, but fateful is effortless.
The characters are all unique. The dialogue is also wonderful and believable. When Phoebe travels to Belgium and France, you can almost hear accents in the syntax of the words spoken by the characters she meets there.
A few people have expressed the only unbelievable part was the minor “romance” plot toward the end. I can certainly see how it feels separate from the rest of the book, but it still felt necessary in order for Phoebe to arrive at the place she does by the time the end of the novel comes.
It’s no A Visit From the Goon Squad. The sentences aren’t strong, golden hits, but instead flow one into the next. The overall topic is less focused, more a section of a life-story than a well thought out literary piece. But it reads beautifully and her ability to fit entire lives into a few pages or so is worth the read.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Trigger warning: this book handles heavy topics such as grieving a loved one, suicide, abuse and drugs.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Rape, Terminal illness, Violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Moderate: Death, Sexual content, Suicide
I enjoyed reading "A Visit from the Goon Squad" so listened to the audio version of Jennifer Egan's first book "The Invisible Circus." My disclaimer is that I listened to this while being incredibly sick with a migraine so it may have infected my review. I did like the reader's various voices and thought she captured the moody male Wolf voice really well. The lead character though, I just had a problem relating to. Set in 1978 and told through the eyes of Phoebe, an 18 year old who travels to Europe to trace the route her political, risk taking sister Faith took before her suicide. The book is filled with a melancholy air that was sometimes alluring and sometimes repelling. Was fun to read about a book that takes place in my home. But snickered as the reader mispronounced Sutro Baths and Los Gatos.
Well written, but I had plausibility issues with some of the narrative developments. One of the relationships was poorly revealed and inadequately explained. Most of the central characters were well-drawn.
Did not enjoy this as much as I had hoped. I think I am not as cerebral or perhaps I've just been untouched by as much tragedy?
Unbalanced! First half of the book is full of pity. Second half is full of sensuality. I was back and forth between feeling annoyed and not being able to put this book down. So the average of my emotions is 3 stars.
Captures adolescence well, in the varying extremes.
The second half begins with a completely unlikely encounter. No way the protagonist would find THE person with the answers with such ease. But yeah, here he is, and oh also, he's incredibly attractive, and okay, here's a lot of sex.
The indulgence totally surprised me. I have read Goon Squad and I became accustomed to Egan withholding pleasure from her characters. Not so here.
Captures adolescence well, in the varying extremes.
The second half begins with a completely unlikely encounter. No way the protagonist would find THE person with the answers with such ease. But yeah, here he is, and oh also, he's incredibly attractive, and okay, here's a lot of sex.
The indulgence totally surprised me. I have read Goon Squad and I became accustomed to Egan withholding pleasure from her characters. Not so here.
I actually listened to the audiobook of this novel and between the seriously annoying Phoebe and the woman reading the book, I couldn't stand this book as a whole. It is a coming of age story for a young woman (girl really, she is so naive and difficult) who has lots of unresolved grief that's affecting the whole family. While 1960-70s interest me a lot, I was completely bored and sometimes annoyed with the characters and their viewpoints. The flashbacks of her sister were stereotypical flower child goes anarchist. Her boyfriend "Wolf" felt like a predator taking advantage of Phoebe's clear idolation of him, and using her as a means to be with his dead girlfriend. And in the end when Phoebe is supposedly more wise and grown up, she still is annoying, so it felt like there was very little that changed in this world even though supposedly everything had changed. Feel free to skip this one!
Well written, interesting characters, compelling and unique. What more can we ask of a novel. Makes me want to read more from this author.
While there things that seemed unnecessary, such as the chapter devoted to the three or four weeks that Phoebe had copious amounts of sex with her dead sister's boyfriend, or the chapter devoted to her bad acid trip in France, there was something about it that left a good impression, something that made it worth reading. After finishing the novel, I was only slightly disappointed that it wasn't actually about a circus, and that the narrator's name was Phoebe.