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A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan

Start date: September 15, 2012

Finish date: September 15, 2012

Discussion: Reading List

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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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Jun 19, 2014 Kai Coates rated it it was ok

Shelves: group-bookish, s14-bookish-challenge

Independently, I liked most of the short stories/chapters that make of A Visit from the Goon Squad. However, I did not feel like the novel was as good as any of its parts. Egan's writing is a lot of "this character feels this way" and "now this character thinks this." There is no discovery, no organic element, that made this reader care about any of the characters or the plot(s). She has nice moments strung together because of their connection to the two main characters (Bennie and Sasha), but n ...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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Sep 27, 2011 Carol in Bothell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I had just finished re-reading "Barchester Towers" when I picked this up and the contrast was pretty striking. Chapter 1 has Sasha randomly stealing a wallet from some poor woman in the Ladies' Room and I almost put it down right then and there. (What would Archbishop Grantly say about such a thing? Unimaginable!) I kept reading and after a while stopped pining for the 19th century, partly because Egan was definitely "talking 'bout my generation." The novel was more satisfying that I expected ba ...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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Oct 11, 2015 Tamela rated it liked it

Shelves: books-read-in-2015

I took too long to read this one and I lost some of my understanding during that time.

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Jul 03, 2011 Jessica rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, new-york-city

I enjoy the way that Egan weaves her threads together, but a part of me feels as if I'm somewhat too dumb to recognize and appreciate her overall themes. She clearly has a way with prose, but on some level it just leaves me cold. ...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Greenegirl rated it it was ok

Shelves: cr-reading-list, library-book

This book was always too conscious of the message it was trying to impart.

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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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Feb 16, 2012 Curious Squid rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, 1001-books

This book seemed disjointed and choppy. One chapter was describing a characters past, next chapter usually a different character. All linked together around the punk music industry.

Suddenly 3/4 through the book I got it, and really ended up liking it. Not the typical story of people, their pasts and their connections. Totally different direction than I thought the book would take.

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