A Visit from the Goon Squad: Pulitzer Prize Winner
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption “features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human” (The Chicago Tribune).
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century • A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 Years
Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs.
“Pitch perfect . . . Darkly, rippingly funny . . . Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.”—The New York Times Book Review
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Community Reviews
When I saw she was coming to the Brooklyn Book Festival, I knew I had her book sitting there somewhere in my humongous pile! So far, so good
***
Excellent book. It takes us from sometime in the '70s all the way through around 2020, and not necessarily in that order. It's a little tough in the beginning because she shifts the focus to a different time and a different character in the book, but once you get used to her rhythm, it really works.
I thought the two main characters were Bennie (recording industry "mogul") and Sasha (his one-time assistant), but then the stories shift to other people who have been in and out of their lives over the years. Amazing how the author can, in one chapter, make you feel like you really know these people and can relate to them. The book is about how, ultimately, we're all visited by the "Goon Squad" (time) and we feel like it suddenly snuck up on us. Egan uses technology in a really clever way to illustrate this too.
***
Excellent book. It takes us from sometime in the '70s all the way through around 2020, and not necessarily in that order. It's a little tough in the beginning because she shifts the focus to a different time and a different character in the book, but once you get used to her rhythm, it really works.
I thought the two main characters were Bennie (recording industry "mogul") and Sasha (his one-time assistant), but then the stories shift to other people who have been in and out of their lives over the years. Amazing how the author can, in one chapter, make you feel like you really know these people and can relate to them. The book is about how, ultimately, we're all visited by the "Goon Squad" (time) and we feel like it suddenly snuck up on us. Egan uses technology in a really clever way to illustrate this too.
This book was really interesting. The connections between chapters of each person's life was a fun way of navigating the story. My only qualm is the same qualm I have with any media depicting people who are "cool" or "vibey", the dialogue can be very corny at times. all to say, a good read, and not too heady to understand.