From the Bookshelf of Tackling the Pulitzer Prize Winners!…

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan

Start date: May 1, 2011

Finish date: May 31, 2011

Discussion: The Tackled Pulitzers

Why we're reading this: This book was the 2010 Winner. See our discussion group on it for more about our responses.
[close] This book was the 2010 Winner. See our discussion group on it for more about our responses.

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The Tackled Pulitzers

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What Members Thought

Jun 30, 2025 Roy rated it really liked it

Another notch in my Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction belt. Like the previous one I read, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, the format of this book feels more like a short story collection than a novel. Rearranging the chapters would make little difference since we’re not following a narrative from beginning to end. From a marketing standpoint, novels are usually better sellers than short story collections or anthologies. So, even if A Visit from the Goon Squad and Olive Kitteridge were both Another notch in my Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction belt. Like the previous one I read, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, the format of this book feels more like a short story collection than a novel. Rearranging the chapters would make little difference since we’re not following a narrative from beginning to end. From a marketing standpoint, novels are usually better sellers than short story collections or anthologies. So, even if A Visit from the Goon Squad and Olive Kitteridge were both conceived by their authors as story collections, they have figured out or been advised that it would be monetarily advantageous to categorize their books as novels. Even though Olive barely makes an appearance in some of the chapters/stories that comprise Strout’s book, I feel that the linking of them was a little stronger than was done by Jennifer Egan in her Pulitzer winner. That’s probably because Strout doesn’t experiment much with her prose, but rather, presents a series of events in the fictional town where Olive lives that are each written in the same literary style. Egan on the other hand jumps around from first person to second person to third person point of view. One notable chapter is written as a set of PowerPoint slides. I almost skipped that section, but decided not to and was glad I read it. Olive Kitteridge is largely, even if not completely, about a woman named Olive. The primary characters of A Visit from the Goon Squad are a former punk rocker turned record executive named Bennie Salazar, and a woman he employs named Sasha. But plenty of other characters are visited throughout the narrative, to the point where I lost track at times of whether I was revisiting a character who was at a different stage of their life than where they were at in the previous visit, or being introduced to a brand new character making an appearance because they are connected to Bennie and/or Sasha in some way. A Visit from the Goon Squad is mostly about the process of aging, and the music that helps shape our lives as we go through a variety of stages. Struggling or professionally successful, single or married or remarried, satisfied with one's lot in life or barely holding on to sanity as the bastards beat you down. Individually, each chapter is absorbing. It doesn't matter who is centered in it because each character's situation is as wonderfully displayed by Egan's steady hand as the others. Egan succeeds at an author’s primary job which is to make you care about what’s going on and who it’s happening to. But she refuses to stay in any one place. The setting of the current chapter will be a different time and place than where the preceding chapter left off, abandoning one story that reads as a strong standalone piece, presenting a new one to cast its spell before moving on to something else. Some chapters will be more compelling to you than others, per your taste. The one featuring a dictator had me briefly wondering if I had wandered into a different book and genre entirely, not that I didn't enjoy it. As for the previously mentioned PowerPoint section, it reads like…well, a PowerPoint presentation. Yet it manages to reveal a considerable amount of detail about the characters featured in the slides. A Visit from the Goon Squad is not as wildly experimental as a book such as House of Leaves, so no need for you to pull any hair out or to pour yourself a stiff drink while reading Egan’s prose. But she takes risks for sure and mostly pulls them off. I’m not a big re-reader of novels, but this is one I may come back to at some point down the line. I’m pretty sure that I missed out on some stuff because I was not paying sufficiently close attention. Some novels allow you to follow along effortlessly while others demand greater focus in order to notice character arcs to the full extent. A Visit from the Goon Squad falls into the latter category, and a second read would probably be beneficial to my full comprehension. Then again, an author’s job is to get it right the first time because many readers will leisurely visit a book just once. The Pulitzer Prize committee felt that Egan succeeded in a big way. As for me, overall, I enjoyed this book. But if I was to rank the Pulitzer winners that I’ve read so far, quite a few others would be placed above this one. Not meant as a slight, since the lower end of the best of the best is still a pretty sweet spot to be. When I choose to reread a novel, I prefer that it’s because I was so overwhelmed by its beauty the first time that I want a second helping, rather than rereading to confirm that I kept proper track of everyone and everything going on. In general, I like short story collections that feel like a collection of great short stories, and novels that feel, regardless of how many characters it contains, like a single great story. But I'm not the one handing out Pulitzer Prizes. ...more

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Sep 24, 2011 Dree rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-read, 2011-reads, the-northeast, pulitzer-all-winner-short

I love books like this. The multiple narrators and points of view, the jumps across time and space, the finding out what happened to characters (even minor characters). What really happens in the book? I can't exactly explain it--we just learn about a variety of characters and the ways their lives interact, whether they know it or not. Much of it is a little bit funny, some crazy, some sad. But it is just points in the lives of some people. And it's great.

I was leaning toward 5 stars, but I got ...more

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May 06, 2011 Crafterlyn rated it really liked it

I think the style of this book is written very much represents life today - it mirrors how we are are all networked together and we get little snippets of so many different people's lives. We may be a part of one chapter of someone's life, but then we often only hear about what is going on with them through other acquaintances or even just news updates.

Each chapter could really stand on its own as a short story, but I'm glad they are all pulled together so we can track the different characters a ...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Kristi rated it really liked it

Shelves: reading-challenge-2012, 1001-books

A captivating read. Egan's novel is a set of interwoven narratives; each successive chapter develops a character introduced in a previous installment, filling in gaps in the overall narrative and illustrating the development of specific individuals over time. The title, "A Visit from the Goon Squad," is a reference to time; time visits each of the characters in her book, leading to destruction for some and redemption for others. The book has a rather large cast of characters, but the "main" ones A captivating read. Egan's novel is a set of interwoven narratives; each successive chapter develops a character introduced in a previous installment, filling in gaps in the overall narrative and illustrating the development of specific individuals over time. The title, "A Visit from the Goon Squad," is a reference to time; time visits each of the characters in her book, leading to destruction for some and redemption for others. The book has a rather large cast of characters, but the "main" ones are Bennie, a record exec, and Sasha, a troubled young woman who works as his assistant at one point. Egan returns to their narratives multiple times over the course of her book. Music and rock culture feature prominently in many of the chapters, as well as life in New York City. Self-destruction, neuroses, love, sexuality, aging, identity, and family feature as major themes.

I thought this book was very interesting and well written. Egan had me hooked from the very first chapters on Sasha and Bennie. I thought that all of her characters had a very distinctive voice, which helped to maintain my interest over the course of the narrative. She also did an excellent job balancing the variety of the individual narratives with the coherence of the "overall" story. I thought it came together quite nicely. The one thing I didn't particularly like was the introduction of the idea of "pointers" (babies and young children who purchase music by merely pointing at their tablets) and the general development of social communication in the final chapter. I suppose Egan was trying to incorporate some commentary on the future in this closing section (since most of her chapters seem to take present in the ambiguous present or past), but it seemed like a rather heavy-handed and not terribly insightful way to make that move--I didn't really think it added to the core story and found it to be distracting.

I would recommend this book to pretty much anyone. If you're interested in music and rock culture, it will probably appeal to you a bit more than the average person. Since so much of the novel revolves around the theme of time and aging, I suspect that older readers will get more out of this than younger ones. ...more

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May 23, 2015 Shatterlings rated it liked it

Shelves: prize-winners

Pulitzer Prize winners, it seems you either love them or you just don't get them. This one is clever, I can see it's clever, the playing with time and different view points, so yes it's clever. But do I love it...no, it all left me kind of cold. It's so hard to keep track of all the characters and the timing of events without a story. It might not be big or clever of me but I like a story I can follow without having to draw some sort of chart, this needed a chart. ...more

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Jun 18, 2010 Linda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-winners

This is a three-and-a-halfer, but I feel OK with letting it have four, for the moment anyway. It's interesting how brilliant everyone finds it, because I feel like the joke might be a teeny bit on the reader, along the lines of "We have met the enemy and it is us." But I definitely enjoyed reading it, whether or not it's Brilliant. The last couple chapters are my favorite because she does something I struggle daily to do, which is show how the "kids today" -- whatever we're calling them, not the ...more

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Jul 06, 2011 Kathy McC rated it liked it

Shelves: pulitzer-winners

Won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.
As with the winner last year's Pulitzer, Tinkers, I understand that the writing has an edge and that the prose is unique. The author shows off a variety of writing styles, especially Chapter 9 done with footnote style and Chapter 12 written in Power Point style. But,none of this prose creativity really does much for the plot development. Storyline really didn't do much for me. All in all, I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't buy a copy. ...more

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