A Visit from the Goon Squad in Around the Year in 52 Books

Apr 30, 2022 Blaine rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2022, hardcover, e-book, pc-100-essential-read

“The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.”
…
“Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?”

Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.”

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a difficult novel to describe. The narrative shifts back and forth over a forty-year period, from the late 1970s to the early 2020s. Different chapte

“The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.”
…
“Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?”

Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.”

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a difficult novel to describe. The narrative shifts back and forth over a forty-year period, from the late 1970s to the early 2020s. Different chapters are presented from the perspective of different characters, varying between first-person, second-person, and third-person storytelling. If there’s a central character, it’s Bennie Salazar, who we see as a bass player in his high school band, and at later points as a successful and then a not-so-successful record producer. If there’s a second central character, it’s Sasha, Bennie’s one-time assistant, who we again see at different ages in different chapters. Throughout the rest of the novel, we meet the rest of the members of Bennie’s band, the Flaming Dildos; his mentor, Lou, and Lou’s family; Bennie’s wife Stephanie and their son Christopher; Stephanie’s brother Jules; Stephanie’s former boss Dolly and her daughter Lulu; Sasha’s college friends and her family. These characters interact with and overlap each other’s stories, and by the end, the reader has the complete story.

I quite enjoyed A Visit from the Goon Squad, though it won’t be for everybody. With all the shifting perspectives and time jumps, keeping track of who’s telling what story when is not always easy. There are two chapters that are more experimental than traditional: one written in the form of an annotated magazine article, which I absolutely loved, and the other a chapter told entirely through PowerPoint slides, which I’m more ambivalent about. It was certainly interesting, and managed to convey a surprising amount of emotion, but I still felt like a traditional chapter could have conveyed more. But the writing throughout the book is excellent, as you’d expect from a book that won the Pulitzer Prize. And the story, and its portrayal of the different ways these characters grapple with self-destruction, redemption, and just getting older, is absorbing and moving. Recommended. ...more

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Apr 24, 2017 Stacy rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, kindle, ebook, library-read, location-california, 2017, 52-books-around-the-year-2017, location-new-york

3.5 stars
This book had many different POVs and different writing styles. There was even a chapter in power point. The timeline was also weird. It went backwards connecting different people together and ended up in the future when one of the characters was in his 60s and both had known one of the characters.

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