Changes

|summary=A re-issue of the Pulitzer Prize -winning author, Jennifer Egan's debut novel tells the story of a young girls girl seeking to explore the death of her older sister. Set in the late 1970s it explores the differences in value values of the previous generation but after a stunning opening, rather loses its punch and charm.

Then in the second part , she heads to Europe and like Phoebe herself, sadly the book started to lose its way at an alarming pace from this point on. She follows her sister's path through Europe based on the postcards Faith sent home from London, Belgium, Paris, Germany and Italy. That could have been hugely interesting but Egan fails to evoke a sense of place and each reads more like an extract from a tourist guide, which was a huge disappointment. There she briefly and for no good reason discovers and loses God before experimenting with hard drugs. I confess that this is a bugbear of mine. There is little more dull duller than the reading of characters' dreams in books but the reading of characters' drug trips is one of those things. Like dreams, they may be interesting to the originator, but seldom to a third party.

The third part deals with Phoebe finding out what happened to Faith when she discovers someone from Faith's past. While this should be the exciting conclusion, it is strangely dull in the telling. There's none of the vigour and charm of the first part here where it is so needed. Phoebe by now has become something of a cipher cypher for the story rather than an interesting character in her own right, at least to me. Neither does she really seem to change that much as a result of her journey. Both American sisters experience the deviant vices of Europe (militant politics, alcohol, drugs, rampant sex) - one survives and one doesn't.

I think what Egan was trying to do was to look at what happened to the 1960s student generation and to contrast this with the generation that followed in the 1970s. To some extent , this is achieved but unfortunately , it doesn't really say that much about it. Apart from bomb threats in London shops and some bad clothing, there's not much that evokes the 1970s as I recall them.

At least some of my lukewarm feelings about the book come from the let down from the genuinely fantastic opening to the book. If it could have carried on at that pitch, it was five -star material. But it doesn't and while I can understand the urge to re-issue her earlier works, it pales besides ''A Visit from the Goon Squad''. It's interesting to see where a writer has come from, but as a stand -alone, it's not a book I'd rush to recommend.

Under no circumstances let this put you off [[A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan|A Visit From the Goon Squad]] though. You might also enjoy [[Wrecker by Summer Wood]].