Abstract

The Invisible Circus opens with a missed event. ‘Crossing the lush, foggy park’, Phoebe realises that she has come too late to the Revival of the Moons festival, an event which encapsulates her desire ‘to relive what she’d failed to live even once.’ [4] Approaching a man [Kyle] ‘dismantling a bandstand’, she asks ‘Did I miss it?’ [3]. A few pages later, having gone back to the man’s apartment, the two talk about Phoebe’s older sister, Faith. The subsequent exchange between Phoebe and Kyle forms the starting point for this paper:
‘Sometimes I feel she’s [Faith] still back there […] In that time. I miss it like hell.’
‘Me too,’ Phoebe said, with an ache in her chest. ‘Even if I wasn’t really there.’
‘Sure you were there.’
‘No, I was a kid.’
There was a long pause. ‘I wasn’t there either, either,’ Kyle said. ‘Not totally.’ [12]
This paper will explore the feeling of ‘missing it’ in Egan’s first novel. What is it that Phoebe misses and what does it mean for her to relive an event she never lived in the first place? I will argue that The Invisible Circus is both in thrall to and profoundly sceptical of a version of the 1960s which appears, initially at least, to be signified by Phoebe’s dead sister Faith and fossilised in the San Francisco of the novel’s opening chapters. In asking what it means for Phoebe to miss and want to relive an event she never experienced, the paper will pose larger questions about the role of cultural mythology, nostalgia and the place of the ‘real’ historical event in Egan’s work.