A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

A Visit From the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2010

Jennifer Egan's spellbinding novel circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her longstanding compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend.

We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life-divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed up band in the basement of a suburban house-and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang-who thrived and who faltered-and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to Powerpoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both-and escape the merciless progress of time-in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.

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***Jennifer Egan's latest novel THE CANDY HOUSE is coming April 2022, the long-awaited sibling novel to A Visit from the Goon Squad***

Reviewed by lisacee on

5 of 5 stars

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Wow! I loved this book so much.

You know those books where the author tries to weave multiple characters together but you have to struggle to remember how all of them are connected? This is not that book. The many characters, with a center of Bennie the music exec and Sasha his assistant, live throughout decades during this book but it all flows seamlessly.

This book manages to jump between characters and years without confusing the audience or feeling forced. I feel like I know all of the characters and I loved watching them progress through their connected lives. I know this will be a book I will return to, just to spend time with these characters again.

The storytelling style varies from normal (though beautiful) prose, to a magazine article written from jail, to a PowerPoint slide show. Again, seamlessly.

I don't want to give too much away because it was so much fun experiencing it and I don't want to ruin that for anyone reading this. This is the best book I have read in a really long time, and I have enjoyed a lot of good books recently. Wow! I loved this book so much.

You know those books where the author tries to weave multiple characters together but you have to struggle to remember how all of them are connected? This is not that book. The many characters, with a center of Bennie the music exec and Sasha his assistant, live throughout decades during this book but it all flows seamlessly.

This book manages to jump between characters and years without confusing the audience or feeling forced. I feel like I know all of the characters and I loved watching them progress through their connected lives. I know this will be a book I will return to, just to spend time with these characters again.

The storytelling style varies from normal (though beautiful) prose, to a magazine article written from jail, to a PowerPoint slide show. Again, seamlessly.

I don't want to give too much away because it was so much fun experiencing it and I don't want to ruin that for anyone reading this. This is the best book I have read in a really long time, and I have enjoyed a lot of good books recently.

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