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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What Members Thought

Dec 16, 2016 Jennifer rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-favorites, library-books, 2016-favorites, pulitzers, music, new-york, 1001-btrbyd, nyt-best-books-of-the-21st-century

This book made clear to me that I have a profound weakness for dark, heavy books that delve into the cynicism of life using the most glittering words imaginable. Somehow that gorgeousness of language is a balm, it gives everything meaning where very little (or none) existed previously.

I honestly don't understand other reviewers who condemn this novel as "gimmicky". If this is gimmicky, I want ALL THE GIMMICKS. This book was magnificent - some of the most delicious language I have read in a long ...more

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Jun 28, 2013 Kristel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: pulitzer-prize, 1001-books, 1001-challenge, new-york

Published: 2010
Pages: 274
Genre: fiction, Punk Rock Music, Psychological Fiction
My copy: Library book

A series of interconnected stories of a wide cast of characters who all have some kind of connection to each other, covering five decades with the backdrop of the music industry and covering locales such as New York, San Francisco, Africa and Naples. I loved this book because it is about time. I like stories about time. The title, A Visit From the Goon Squad, is a reference to time. Time is a goon
Published: 2010
Pages: 274
Genre: fiction, Punk Rock Music, Psychological Fiction
My copy: Library book

A series of interconnected stories of a wide cast of characters who all have some kind of connection to each other, covering five decades with the backdrop of the music industry and covering locales such as New York, San Francisco, Africa and Naples. I loved this book because it is about time. I like stories about time. The title, A Visit From the Goon Squad, is a reference to time. Time is a goon and it beats you up. This is a work of originality. Not that interconnected stories have never been done but all the elements of this story; the interconnects, time as a theme, shifts in communications, use of texting and slide shows all come together to make this a unique work deserving of a Pulitzer Prize. There are many characters but they are all connected on some level, they don't even know how connected they are or how much they have impacted each other. I liked many of them and the way Egan developed them was very different and fun. The language was fresh and changed over time and with various characters and finally progressing to texting and to power point. There was a lot of emotional impact for me. The passing of time is emotional, the hurts, the tragedies and the victories.
I liked these quotes; Ms Egan uses a passage from Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time to introduce the book "Poets claim that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselvs that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years." and "The unknown element in the lives of other people is like that of nature, which each fresh scientific discovery merely reduces but does not abolish."
Pg 174, "...she'd felt the passage of time." The slide show of Pauses (wonderful), pg 269, "times a goon", and page 259 gives a most wonderful (probabably exaggerated for effect) description of today's relativism. ...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Jolee rated it liked it · review of another edition

Egan's writing is terribly clever, so much so that at times, the tone feels a wee bit sarcastic or unsympathetic. I suppose that is fine, but while the characters certainly are fully realized, I guess this plays out for me, because I did not have a lot of sympathy for them. Her acute assessment of the utter amorality and insipidness of Generation Text is compelling and downright sobering. Dang.
...more

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Feb 01, 2012 Aditi rated it liked it

The book has an interesting plot which covers a long span of time, lives of several characters and how they are inter-twined in a series events. I especially enjoyed the quirky elements of the characters ranging from a kleptomaniac to 'gold flakes in coffee' drinker. I think it's impressive how Jennifer Egan created the character arcs for the readers, for e.g. she narrates what becomes of her characters and how their lives turn out in future. I was glued to the book until it's end. ...more

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Sep 15, 2021 Anne Bennett rated it liked it

Shelves: reviewed, audiobook, pulitzer-prize

I went back and forth first hating, then loving this book. I decided it must have won the Pultizer in 2011 because of how it used different tones (satire, tragedy, tragicomedy) and styles (uniquely PowerPoint and text.) Read my review when I get it posted for more of my thoughts.

My review: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/... ...more

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