Review
"The days of losing touch are almost gone," proclaims one of the many characters in Jennifer Egan's meditation on the loss of youthful idealism to the ravages of time and the secrets that reverberate through the years. It is the early 1990s, and Sasha, Drew, and Rob are students at New York University, bright 20-somethings on the verge of promising lives, in a city aglow with possibility. Bill Clinton has just been elected, the Internet is beginning to bubble up from its underground status into a mainstream phenomenon, and 9/11 is still a blissful decade away. "We'll meet in that new place," says their friend Bix, the Internet prophet, "and first it'll seem strange, and pretty soon it'll seem strange that you could ever lose someone, or get lost." However, the realities of losing touch and getting lost animate this novel, with characters breaking away from each other far...
Beyond the Book
Although Jennifer Egan now lives in New York, she grew up in California, and her knowledge of the Bay Area/Los Angeles music scene gives the book a gritty authenticity, with references to bands rarely mentioned in the pages of literary fiction: the Dead Kennedys, the Nuns, Black Flag, the Avengers, the Germs, and Negative Trend are all name-checked. "Nineteen-eighty is almost here, thank God," sneers Rhea, scoffing at the Haight-Ashbury's burned out hippies and reveling in her identity as a green-haired punk. Bennie plays bass while Scotty sings lead in their band, the Flaming Dildos, and Rhea and Jocelyn, attired in dog collars and ripped stockings, attend thrillingly aggressive shows at venues like San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (the Bay Area's answer to New York's legendary...
