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The Invisible Circus

by Jennifer Egan (Goodreads Author)

3.47 of 5 stars 3.47 · rating details · 2,232 ratings · 274 reviews

In Jennifer Egan’s highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O’Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith’s life and death, Phoebe ret...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published March 9th 2001 by Pan Macmillan (first published December 1st 1994)

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Jul 31, 2011 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like Jennifer Egan's writing, in its fluidity. The story itself often makes me feel like I am swimming in words. But sometimes, I feel like I am being deceived - the characters only appear to have complexity and vulnerability. It is like watching a movie that you like because it has a lovely way of unfolding, but there is nothing that will linger, afterwards. I feel often like the language is much more meaningful than the meaning it is trying to (or not trying to) convey.

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Apr 21, 2009 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, favorites

Egan's freshman novel, about a girl who, along with her widowed mother, is frozen in time since the suicide of her hippie sister the decade before. Set in 1970s San Francisco and Europe, where the protagonist traces her sister's footsteps. Started off a bit rough but it's smooth now, and quite vivid. One scene on the beach with the sisters and the dying father made me put the book down for a few days -- the narrator's childhood memory was so real and painful. By the end, Phoebe has shed a great...more

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Nov 03, 2007 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: booksread2007

I love Jennifer Egan. I read her books in reverse order (starting with 'The Keep', then 'Look At Me', and then 'Invisible Circus'). I love that she explores different themes in each book -- all three are very different. 'Invisible Circus' gets a firm 3 stars from me. I loved the overall feeling of living in the world during a time of great change, but not being able to identify just what it is that is happening even though you still want to be a part of it. Still, she uses a lot of exposition an...more

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Mar 12, 2009 Marie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, travel, europe, women, coming-of-age

Phoebe lives most of her life reeling from the grief of having lost her father and then her older sister, Faith, before she reached her adolescence.

Her sister was a flower child and fell to her death from a cliff in an Italian seaside town. At the age of 18, Phoebe decides to pursue her sister's ghost through Europe to see if she can decipher what really happened to her.

She explores the shadows of the 60s and the flower children and skirts the memories of her childhood. This book is an excellent...more

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May 28, 2007 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Flower child wanna-bes

Shelves: novels, dark-radicals

The protagonist, a teenager living in San Fran in the early 70s, has lived her entire life in the shadow of her flower-child older sister, who has long been dead due to mysterious circumstances.

In what turned out to be an extremely satisfying coming-of-age novel, she goes to find out what happened, travelling to Europe in her sisters footsteps and encountering bohemian characters (and sometimes tragic burnouts, junkies and users) from her sister's life. The mystery's resolution was surprising t...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Diane Gilbert-snyder rated it 2 of 5 stars

Jennifer Egan is one of my favorite authors. Like many readers, I was wowed by "A Visit from the Goon Squad" (2010), but I was dazzled just as much by the novel that preceded it, "Look at Me" (2001), whose intricate plot is part thriller, part social satire, and part multi-layered identity drama. In addition to being stylistically unique, the narratives in both these previous books shift around in time, even looking ahead into the near future. "Look at Me" was even uncannily prescient about Face...more Jennifer Egan is one of my favorite authors. Like many readers, I was wowed by "A Visit from the Goon Squad" (2010), but I was dazzled just as much by the novel that preceded it, "Look at Me" (2001), whose intricate plot is part thriller, part social satire, and part multi-layered identity drama. In addition to being stylistically unique, the narratives in both these previous books shift around in time, even looking ahead into the near future. "Look at Me" was even uncannily prescient about Facebook, which had not yet become a “thing” when the book was written, and the terrorist mentality that led to 9/11. Given all this, I really looked forward to reading the first of Egan’s four novels, The Invisible Circus (1995), especially since it deals with many issues that interest me: coping with grief, the time period of the Sixties and Seventies, the reverberation of youthful experiences on adulthood, and a female protagonist coming of age.

Parts One and Two are interesting enough, and very vivid. However, as parts Three and Four wear on, something goes terribly awry with this novel, so much so that, as the plot twisted—confoundingly, implausibly—through one gratuitous passage after another, I wondered whether any editor had laid eyes on it prior to publication. “Okay, we get it!” I thought. “She was overshadowed by her sister! She’s young and insecure! She wishes she’d been part of the Sixties!” etc. Because it was Egan, I was unprepared for the tedious belaboring of themes. Nor did I expect to have my credulity challenged. At first I bought the amazing coincidences that landed Phoebe in the Munich apartment of Faith’s old boyfriend, Wolf. It is not until we learn that he has withheld the circumstances of Faith’s death—and the fact that he was present at it—that Egan loses me entirely, so obvious it is that this withholding of information is purely for the convenience of the plot. Worst of all, she introduces an awkward structure to tell Wolf’s and Faith’s backstory, moving between (and sometimes blurring) accounts by Wolf in first person and flashbacks told in close third, both styles containing many fine details that would not be included in such an account.

Did I say the awkward structure was worst of all? Sorry, I meant the 20-page “lost week(end)” sequence in which Phoebe and Wolf become sex addicts on their way to the scene of Faith’s suicide, barely leaving their hotel room for days on end. Is this supposed to be a nod to the excesses of the Sixties? An indication of how freaked out they are by the prospect of confronting their traumatic memories? I can’t figure out what purpose these pages serve with respect to either the plot or the characters. And twenty pages of belabored prose that serve no purpose? Practically unforgivable.

I still admire Egan greatly, but in the end, perhaps the greatest value I derived from reading "The Invisible Circus" was insight into her development as a writer and how she cleaned up her excesses in subsequent works.(less)

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Sep 07, 2012 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiftyfiftyme, read-while-traveling

If you're coming to The Invisible Circus after reading A Visit from the Goon Squad or The Keep, as I did, you're likely to be disappointed. It's different kind of book, more straightforward, with all the earmarks of a novel whose protagonist, Phoebe, is destined to lose her innocence.

“The dullness of Phoebe’s bedroom met her like a blow: polar bear wallpaper, rows of faded stuffed animals, a wicker chair that crackled when you sat in it.”

After graduating from high school, Phoebe decides to trave...more

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Jan 13, 2011 Elisabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a wonderfully descriptive book, set in the late 70´s. Phoebe has just finished high school and sets out on an impromptu quest to find out more about how her sister died. She heads to Europe, following the path her sister made years before.

The story is rich, both historically and in terms of her own and her sister´s internal/emotional struggles. I imagine that most who read this would be able to relate on some level to the insecurities and difficulties that the characters face. And, if no...more

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May 29, 2012 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Pat Conroy is quoted as having said about Egan's precocious debut that 'if there were any justice in the world, no one would be allowed to write a first novel of such beauty and accomplishment.' I completely agree! I wouldn't say 'The Invisible Circus' is perfect, but it comes very damn near. It's a story about love and loss, about growing up and about all those significant things in life. It circumnavigates the globe and transcends time, taking its young heroine from San Francisco to the mounta...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Belinda Rena Bachtiar rated it 2 of 5 stars

Boring! It was a story about a little hipster bitch who love and hate her dead sister and decided to find out about her sister's death in Italy. She went to Europe, idiotically deceived by another hipster on Netherlands, almost lost her virginity, but eventually lost it with her sister's ex-bf (Like you can't be more slutty).

I genuinely think that her sister, Faith, deserved to be dead. She's a trouble maker, attention seeker, typical teenager who would want to do anything for what she think lov...more

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Oct 09, 2007 Offbalance rated it 1 of 5 stars

After a promising start, this book failed to go anywhere. I lost all patience with the annoying main character, and really had no interest in her quest to find "answers" about her sister after awhile. Her naivete grew wearying, and I longed for the ability to reach between the pages and slap her.

Egan has a gift for description, but needs work on her pacing. Perhaps that improved with her subsequent works.

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Sep 03, 2012 Ryan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Pretty disappointing. I loved Good Squad and thought her style was really interesting so I randomly picked another one by her. It seemed pretty interesting at first, with an interesting premise of a girl living in the shadow of her dead sister – a flower child of the 60s – (and father) and deciding to go to Europe to follow her final trek. However, it just seemed that the entire story, built on and revolving around a character who is never alive, really bogs down. The character Phoebe doesn’t re...more Pretty disappointing. I loved Good Squad and thought her style was really interesting so I randomly picked another one by her. It seemed pretty interesting at first, with an interesting premise of a girl living in the shadow of her dead sister – a flower child of the 60s – (and father) and deciding to go to Europe to follow her final trek. However, it just seemed that the entire story, built on and revolving around a character who is never alive, really bogs down. The character Phoebe doesn’t really seem that real to me, and – not to give anything away, but… -- what she discovers in Europe is A) not surprising and B) not believable. It’s like the author is using an assignment or prompt from a writing class to creative “new fiction” and explore “new writing styles” with a story based on a dead girl or the psychology of a girl who wishes to be and ends up reliving life or becoming like her sister.

I will say that the author’s other main message was to kind of denounce the 60s by showing how the movement when awry, with the flower child Faith dying (and how) and Phoebe representing the 70s and rejecting Faith’s views. That was interesting, the way it was portrayed, with all the major players representing the 60s admitting that they wanted something but they weren’t sure what, and after Kent State it all started to fall apart, and the die-hards fell into radicalism like the Dead Weathermen (is that right? The ones building bombs in their apartment in NYC when they went off?) and whatnot. Like the Good Squad – which tried to portray the different decades and their mentalities, though tied through music – I like how it tried to define/explain the 60s and 70s and put some context behind the basic history though I’m sure many people already know the highlights and this may not be that much more informative.

In the end, I guess I liked it. I read it pretty quickly, found myself thinking about it, and was kind of interested to see what was going to happen next. It just seemed so average by the time I was done with it, not as mind blowing in substance or style as Goon Squad, not as enlightening, and felt really predictable in a weird soap opera way – not to mention kind of ridiculous as Phoebe meets up with someone (all too predictable in a book trying to be ironic) and they – what – fuck their way to Faith’s scene of the crime, fucking 50 times in 4 days while they go to visit the place where Faith died? All right, whatever. 2 or 3 stars? I liked reading it but afterwards I feel like I didn’t like what I read. I guess I like artists that try and push boundaries, and even if everything here didn’t work, I like the fact that she tried something new, and it did keep me pulled in, so I’ll round this 2.5 up this time.
(less)

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Nov 02, 2011 Rosie rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book was recommended by a friend. I see now that it is in part 'her story', i.e. dead father, suicide sister, etc. so I'm not surprised that she enjoyed it. I, however, feel that I learned absolutely nothing from this book. The main character is an immature young woman, self-indulgent, self-referential, passive-aggressive in her behavior, not particularly likeable. The dead sister's boyfriend is a typical predatory male of the 'I couldn't help myself' variety, prepared to hit the road on a...more

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Dec 02, 2010 Christy Birdsong rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was a compulsive read, similar to The Keep (also by Egan), but less satisfying. The story follows Phoebe, a teenager who has survived the death of her father and the subsequent suicide of her older and much beloved and idolized sister. Phoebe's fragile sense of self and her world order finally crumbles, and she sets off on a trip to Europe, to follow in her sister's footsteps leading up to her suicide.

The story was a bit predictable, and I found Phoebe's mood swings (from despondency t...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Nina rated it 5 of 5 stars

i was so blown away by 'a visit from the goon squad' that i wanted to read egan's entire oeuvre. this is her first book and it is amazing. i really fell in love with the writing and the characters. i think it's the hardest thing to create flawed characters and make you love them. the relationships between everyone in the family are really heartbreaking. it made me think how hard it is to have kids and not depend on them for your happiness. there's a fine line between being proud of them and bein...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crimepieces

Set in 1978, eighteen year old Phoebe is living with her mother in the San Francisco apartment that she grew up in and about to take up a place at Berkeley University. She and her mother inhabit a self-contained world mourning the deaths of two family members; Phoebe’s father died on Leukaemia in the 1960s and her sister Faith committed suicide in Italy in 1970. Phoebe has an elder brother, Barry, who has become financially successful in electronics and despairs of the insular life led by his mo...more Set in 1978, eighteen year old Phoebe is living with her mother in the San Francisco apartment that she grew up in and about to take up a place at Berkeley University. She and her mother inhabit a self-contained world mourning the deaths of two family members; Phoebe’s father died on Leukaemia in the 1960s and her sister Faith committed suicide in Italy in 1970. Phoebe has an elder brother, Barry, who has become financially successful in electronics and despairs of the insular life led by his mother and sister.

Phoebe is obsessed with the life of her dead sister, who was their father’s favourite and whom he painted on canvass relentlessly. The first part of the book slowly reveals Phoebe’s obsession and in particular her constant study of a set postcards that Faith sent while travelling around Europe with her Hell’s Angel boyfriend Wolf. When Phoebe’s mother reveals that she is seeing her boss, the womanising film producer Jack, Phoebe flees on a journey following Faith’s footsteps around Europe, leading her ultimately to Italy and the location of her sister’s death.

As I have come to expect from Egan, this is a reflective story about a naive girl’s attempts to investigate the death of her sister. Although set in 1978s San Francisco, the O’Connor family have none of the panache of Armistead Maupin’s characters but have an old-fashioned American feel to them. This is most clearly realised in Phoebe whose naivety is on occasion irritating at the beginning of the book. She travels first to London, then Amsterdam, latching onto people who may have known her dead sister trying to elicit answers about her Faith’s state of mind. It is only when she reaches Munich and accidentally meets the former biker, Wolf, that Phoebe starts to grow up. Wolf accompanies her to the Italian town of her sister’s death and answers, of a kind, are discovered.

For a first novel, the writing is very assured and the language has a poetic languid feel to it. Egan is excellent at showing the dislocation older teenagers feel when they are thrown into an adult world and are forced to disentangle themselves from the security of their family. If you are able to cope with teenage Phoebe’s self indulgence in the first half of the book you will find the suspense of the revelations of the second half poignant and revealing.(less)

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Feb 26, 2013 Katrin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think Jennifer Egan might become one of my favourite writers. This book, set in the 1970s in San Francisco and Europe, is very atmospheric and describes the coming of age of a 17-year old girl who travels through Europe to find out more about her sister's death (the sister had died in Italy 7 years ago under mysterious circumstances).
The language is poetic and metaphoric at times, which I don't always like, but I didn't mind, because it fits the narrative well. And astonishingly, it wasn't a...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Tami rated it 3 of 5 stars

i love this author and i believe this was her first novel? it seemed like a first novel. which, let me be clear, is a huge feat of courage and talent for anyone to achieve and most people cannot do it. so please know i'm not trying to be insulting. it's just that i have read two of her later works and yeah, now THOSE i found much better.

this is basically about an american girl who is ten when her 17 (18?) year old sister commits suicide in italy. now the girl is 18 and she retraces her sister's...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Damian rated it 2 of 5 stars

It's not A Visit from the Goon Squad--not by a long shot. Sensitively written in many parts, a little self-indulgent in others. In my creative writing class, a friend of mine used to call things like this "fantasy stories"--the romantic trip through Europe (where everything seems mysteriously paid for), the wildly passionate affair with a sensitive (slightly) older man, the drug- and wine-fueled (somewhat strained) self-discovery.

Although Phoebe's never-ending gaze into her own psyche seems auth...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Steven rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This was the latest of several recent reads that included, at least peripherally, the notion of young people trying to change the world. I loved Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad (though I can't help appreciating my sister's characterization of it as a "pretend novel") and found it rewarding to read this earlier work and appreciate how much further she's already grown as a writer. Her style engages the reader even through occasional over-explaining, and by the mid-point of The Invisible Circus...more

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Feb 18, 2009 Selene rated it 3 of 5 stars

Finished this book at 1AM. Jennifer Egan is such a beautiful writer, it' almost inconceivable. It is perhaps problematic to read "The Keep" prior to her other novels, because "The Keep" is so perfect, what with the castle and the baroness and the prison writing program and the descriptions of really good food. "The Invisible Circus" had lost revolutionaries, which are like kryptonite to me--I'm powerless to resist their appeal (is kryptonite appealing to those it renders powerless?). But also, i...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Ken rated it 4 of 5 stars

And unbelievable first novel, yet I was only familiar with Egan's later works, and was anticipating the audacious intellectual flights of fancy of, LOOK AT ME, or the intricately and bizarrely plotted story-line of, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD. However, THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS is a very solid and readable examination of a family, and how the mood and tone of the radical sixties changed them forever. Although, the focus is on this particular family dynamic, the book also operates as a metaphor to de...more

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Jan 06, 2011 A.J. rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book after reading Egan's The Keep, which I unconditionally loved, although this book was written first. For me, this book started off really strong but deteriorated as it went on.

Phoebe, the protagonist, feels that she's wasted her life by being too cautious (but she's only 18!!). I can relate to that feeling and I'm older than 18. She goes to Europe, as her sister had, thinking that she's going to become a free spirit like her sister. This book kind of goes against the typical outc...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Larou added it · review of another edition

This is Jennifer Egan’s first novel, and from what I could gather, her suceeding works were somewhat bolder and more unconvential in their treatment of the novel form than this one, which is basically a straightforward realistic narrative about a girl growing up and stepping out of the shadow of her older sister who had been determining all her previous life.

The Invisible Circus has “first novel” written all over it: While it is very cleverly constructed, there is a certain awkwardness in the wa...more This is Jennifer Egan’s first novel, and from what I could gather, her suceeding works were somewhat bolder and more unconvential in their treatment of the novel form than this one, which is basically a straightforward realistic narrative about a girl growing up and stepping out of the shadow of her older sister who had been determining all her previous life.

The Invisible Circus has “first novel” written all over it: While it is very cleverly constructed, there is a certain awkwardness in the way it shows off its themes, makes its motifs and imagery rather too obvious and blatant; it is trying a bit too hard to impress its readers, putting one in mind of an over-eager puppy. But then, just as with cute puppies, we tend to be lenient towards first novels and look on their good sides first, of which The Invisible Circus indeed has many, by far outweighing the few small niggles.

The novel’s first part takes place at home in San Francisco and is centred around the memories Phoebe, the novel’s protagonist, retains of her father and the way he always favoured her elder sister Faith and ends with her mother destroying the image of him Phoebe always had held; in the second part Phoebe is travelling through Europe following the traces of Faith and it ends with Phoebe throwing her sister’s picture and postcards into the Seine; finally, the third part (taking up about half of the novel) is about Phoebe almost literally becoming her sister and ends with her letting go of Faith after learning the truth about her and, in a way, finding herself. The novel’s latter half falls somewhat apart, at least in contrast to the tightly structured first one, and I think I stumbled across several editorial oversights in that part, too (and they must have been quite glaring if I noticed them), unless there is some problem with the e-book missing parts which I suppose is also possible.

The Invisible Circus captures the mood and atmosphere of the late seventies and their sixties-nostalgia perfectly (one nice touch is how Phoebe is so wrapt up in her pining for the Sixties past that she completely misses the exciting things happening in her present – there is only a single, very brief mention of a punk during her stay in London and she barely even notices him). Egan also paints a very vivid picture of both the heady enthusiasm and the utter cluelessness of youth, of what it feels like to pass the threshold into adulthood, both the joy and pain of it. I think The Invisible Circus works even better as a coming-of-age story than as period portrait, Jennifer Egan’s depiction of Phoebe’s growing-pangs so keen and intense at times that it got under my skin and made me feel outright uncomfortable.

Despite some minor flaws, I liked The Invisible Circus very much. In fact, now that I am writing this, I cannot help but notice that those flaws I mentioned earlier, classical first novel flaws, are also a sign of a novelist growing into her craft, growing up as a novelist – in fact, there does seem to be a very marked analogy between the novel and its protagonist, both struggling to stand on their own feet, to find their own voice (which makes me wonder whether there might be some writing idol whose overwhelming influence The Invisible Circus tries to escape?). So maybe the flaws are not flaws at all, but a kind of metafictional mimesis, form imitating subject matter. In either case, this is as a very impressive debut, and Jennifer Egan another author I will have to read more of.(less)

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Aug 24, 2012 Monroe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Two things I will forever crown Invisible Circus as one distinct volume in my shelf for:

1) Jennifer Egan has her way with prose. I am as elated in the beauty of her constructions as I am in the certainty that I am witness to a human being doing what she was called to do, meant to do. She writes to take you in. Her metaphors are constant delights, her insightful comparisons and descriptions teling of what could only be an untiring child's thirst. She would later on win a Pulitzer, for a narrative...more

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Jun 01, 2012 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love Jennifer Egan, but this one, her first novel, was just okay. The prose was graceful, but the characters never quite came into focus, and I don't know...I guess I just don't care about the sixties. At least not in terms of "what it all meant," because I guess I don't think it meant much of anything. The idealism of the time never seemed to have a real direction or purpose to it, which I think is why it curdled so easily into nihilism, self-indulgence, and violence. Actually, it's not that...more

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Mar 17, 2011 Jed rated it 4 of 5 stars

The title refers partly to a Diggers' sponsored happening in late 1960s San Francisco, which was a strong influence on the book's characters Wolf and Faith. Faith is the dead older sister of the main character Phoebe, who, after graduating from high school in 1978, flies off to Europe following the trail of Faith's postcards from eight years before. The title also refers to the reverberations from the '60s felt as inner turmoil in younger brothers and sisters who weren't quite old enough to be t...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Laurie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Worked for me on so many levels. Story is about a girl, a time, a place, a mindset, a culture -- it covers such vast and deep territory. Most of all, it's characters that you want to keep reading. Love that she didn't make Phoebe, the protagonist, too "likable". Instead, she's REAL -- immature, selfish, stuck. Tried to get through Egan's Pulitzer book, A Visit From The Goon Squad, but couldn't. Feel that this book, which is her first novel, is the real winner. Takes place in some of my fave loca...more

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Apr 18, 2010 Haley rated it 2 of 5 stars

The beginning of Egan's novel quickly engages the reader and surpringsly connects you to the main character Phoebe, who in real life you may never notice. While I thought Egan did a good job of going back and forth in time with narrative, beautifully describing parts of Eurpoe and San Fransico and depicting the rough waters of adolescent in the shadow of a larger than life older sibling the story seems to fall apart midway through. The story takes on an almost forced turn with Phoebe's love stor...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Marie Ferreboeuf rated it 2 of 5 stars

I picked this up at the library because I wanted to read "Welcome to the Goon Squad" for which Egan won a Pulitzer. Boy, I hope she'd got better quickly! The plot is silly. Young woman sets off to find out why her sister committed suicide years ago. She had postponed her life in order to find out. She discovers, after having a romance novel affair with her sister's ex-pat ex-boyfriend that the suicide was an act of contrition for killing a janitor by planting a bomb for some German militant grou...more

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About Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and St John's College, Cambridge.

She is the author of three novels, The Invisible Circus, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award, and the bestselling The Keep, and a short story collection, Emerald City. She has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and...more

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Quotes from The Invisible Circus

“This vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life.” — 3 people liked it

“But try as Phoebe might to blend with her peers, it felt like bluffing, mouthing the words to a song she'd never been taught, always a beat late. At best, she fooled them. But the chance to distinguish herself, impress them in the smallest way, was lost. At her vast public high school Phoebe had felt reduced to a pidgin version of herself, as during "conversations" in French class - Where is the cat? Have you seen the cat? Look! Pierre gives the cat a bath - such was her level of fluency while discussing bongs or bands or how fucked-up someone was at a party.” — 2 people liked it

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