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A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan

Start date: September 15, 2012

Finish date: September 15, 2012

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What Members Thought

Aug 29, 2012 Kenneth P. rated it it was ok

This book is a collection of pretty good short stories masquerading as a novel. I read somewhere that Ms. Egan wanted to stretch the limits of the novel (as if great writers have not done that). I'm paraphrasing of course. But that is a load of crap. This is what I think: Egan's publisher wanted a novel because, after all, short stories don't sell. She didn't have a novel but she had these short pieces, many of which had been published in obscure lit-mags. So she set about to weave the tales tog ...more

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Mar 25, 2011 Ruth rated it liked it

What I thought of this book depended on where I was in it. When it started out I thought, "Oh no, another drink, drugs, and gritty sex book. Yawn."

Then when I realized it was going to hop about with multiple time frames and multiple POVs, I became more interested. Trouble was, though, that Egan often didn't give enough clues for me to realize who the hell was talking now. But still, I liked it for the most part.

Then the ending left me puzzled. What was all this noise about? What did I accomplish ...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Mary Ellen rated it liked it

This is a hard book to rate. Very, very clever the way Egan intertwines her stories. Quite gimmicky, the (in)famous Power Point chapter, yet the story it told was very touching and she met her I-can-do-this-with-a-hand-tied-behind-my-back self-imposed challenge handily.

I'm not sure where I come down on her mildly distopian vision of the not-too-far-future.

I positively disliked how much work I had to do just to follow the trail of these stories. Perhaps she had a few paired characters (the lecher ...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Tony rated it it was amazing

It might have been a Tony Gilroy interview in The New Yorker where I first heard the thought that we, as mega consumers of television, books and movies, have seen and heard so many stories we can't find anything new under the sun. As a result, storytellers have taken to teasing out stories, crafting narratives where crucial bits of the story get parsed out like flakes of gold. Using this limited field of vision technique, authors refresh the old, making it new.

Please bear that in mind as you rea It might have been a Tony Gilroy interview in The New Yorker where I first heard the thought that we, as mega consumers of television, books and movies, have seen and heard so many stories we can't find anything new under the sun. As a result, storytellers have taken to teasing out stories, crafting narratives where crucial bits of the story get parsed out like flakes of gold. Using this limited field of vision technique, authors refresh the old, making it new.

Please bear that in mind as you read this review of "A Visit from the Goon Squad."

Egan sketches the lives of two central characters, a music industry executive – who is increasingly unhappy with the direction of the music business (aren’t we all) and his longtime assistant – as they grow from complicated teens to adults with character flaws and later finally find some comfort in their lives. Not an overly complicated story arc or even an original one when laid out end to end, but Egan doesn't let the narrative unfold from point A to point B, she starts in the middle skips back nearly a generation and closes a solid generation after the novel's opening line.

In that disjointed time phase and the way minor characters slip into the storyline take on major storylines of their own and eventually fade away, “A Visit from the Goon Squad” reminds me a lot of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.” It's as if Egan found a box of old photo albums picked a couple at random and craft stories about the people in the pictures. You know, when you pick up the albums, you don't always do it in chronological order and the people in your life gain and diminish in importance, which can be seen by the frequency of their appearances in the photos.

The book isn't for everyone, which can be seen by looking at the reviews and noting how many people loved or hated the book. For some people, entering a chapter in the middle of the action (a technique common among film writers) and then trying to get your bearings is not just disconcerting, it's not worth the effort. And frankly there are more than a few chapters where I found myself saying, “Okay, now who does this person know and where are they from?” It’s like getting to a party late, meeting a bunch of people and trying to figure out how they know the host. I thought it was the trouble just for the audacity the technique itself. Well that and I like to work a room during a party.

I also appreciated how the stories are told in a series of interconnected thing that's that either illuminate a person's character or propel them to a different state. If you go back across each of our lives, you can find moments, some big and some subtle, that tip our paths unalterably in a different direction. Sometimes those moments are made of things that we did or didn't do, and other times we simply bear witness to an event that push us past the point of no return. Not all the moments in our lives are made equal. Egan nails that.

She also understands that we live in a small, small world. Mentioning the butterfly effect is clichéd, but often the people who have the greatest impact on who we become have histories of their own that are unknown to us but make them who they are. Egan sketches out those hidden connections.

Finally, despite displaying an encyclopedic mind that hints at a past career as a college DJ, Egan never references Elvis Costello, a singer/songwriter famous for his wordplay (but who only late in his career put lyrics on his albums), wrote the song Goon Squad back in the late seventies. But I digress and date myself.
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Sep 13, 2012 Ann D rated it really liked it

This seems to be a series of short stories about a group of people who know each other - some of them quite tangentially. They are all connected to the music business, and almost all have a multitude of serious problems. It's not the kind of book I usually read (being entirely ignorant about music), but the writing is excellent and I ended up liking it quite a lot. One story ends well for a character and that was enough for me to relieve the depression. ...more

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Mar 24, 2011 Yashoda Sampath rated it it was amazing

Shelves: readandproudofit, favourites

Deeply, deeply unpredictable novel that manages to write about musicians and love of music without resorting to hoary cliche. This novel is everything that Franzen's Freedom could have been had it been edited down a little better...but Egan would still win as her writing rarely, if ever, draws attention to itself, despite the use of various structures and forms (including a powerpoint presentation!)

I cannot recommend this enough. ...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Katy rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

I had some doubts about this book when the person who loaned it to me also gave me a print-out of a Venn diagram to clarify the relationships of its many characters. I wondered if I would be able to understand a novel that required a diagram, but I ended up being entertained. I thought the characters were well observed and believable if not especially likeable; the writing, however, seemed a little too precious. In the end, a pastiche of loosely related short stories does not a coherent novel ma ...more

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