A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010) A novel written in the form if 13 stories with radically different approaches that don't connect in a narrative line but are linked by characters common to each—who are all roughly connected to the music industry. There are multiple themes connecting the stories, as well—the main one, you could say is: Life kicking your ass. For those few who can't relate to that, give it time. I like how the stories take place in wildly different time periods, which is something a book does so much more gracefully than a movie. Goon Squad crept up on me slowly—I might have even despised it at times—until a particular story (I'm not saying which), late in the book, I absolutely connected with—and made me love the whole. Besides that, I have to mention the oddball chapter that's presented as a PowerPoint, which—though it seems gimmicky on the surface—works (though better on a webpage [Egan's website] than in book form). It works because of its connection to the rest of the book—and because it's very funny. Also, it's the first PowerPoint that didn't make me want to throw up. I got the sense that Jennifer Egan wasn't a music industry person or coke-head, necessarily—but maybe that sense was further confirmed after I read more about her. But I don't think a writer needs to be intimately part of the world they're writing about—I'm all for it when they're not, actually—and I feel like it's the oddly skewed distance of an author to a work that often makes it as compelling as it is. For me, this was one of those instances.