A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Synopsis:

Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives in A Visit from the Goon Squad circle 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 long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale.

Then 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.

“I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away – I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

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.

Awards/Nominations:

• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2011)
• Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Longlist (2011) 
• PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Nominee (2011) 
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (2010) 
• National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2010)
• Galaxy National Book Award for International Author of the Year (2011) 
• Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction (2010) 
• International Dublin Literary Award Nominee for Shortlist (2012) 
• The Rooster — The Morning News Tournament of Books (2011)

My Thoughts:

We are all probably familiar with the Ripple Effect. You throw a stone into a pond, and a multitude of ripples spread wider and wider. Similarly, every chance encounter, every action has innumerable implications. Some we may not even be aware of until far in the future. The passage of years, and each choice made shape our lives, and the lives of those around us. Will I be authentic today? Will I sell out? Tell the truth? Embrace change? Will I let time make me into something that I’m not ready to be? These are just some of the questions addressed by Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. 

“It began the usual way,” page one declares. And thus begins what turns out to be one of the most unusual books I have read in recent memory. In her work of contemporary fiction, Egan explores the lives of a cornucopia of eccentric, narcissistic, and occasionally tragic characters.

The story is broken up into 13 distinct, but interrelated chapters. The stories span several decades. They cover the interactions and relationships of inter- or occasionally only tangentially-connected people and places. Seems pretty normal so far, right? Well, this is where things get interesting.

“Everyone we’ve lost, we’ll find. Or they’ll find us.”

While the story itself is certainly engaging, the most notable thing about Goon Squad is the style of the writing. Egan vacillates between relatively standard novel writing formats, to a weird, edgy text-speak, and even into Power Point-style slide graphics.

This book is a treasure trove of unique and interesting elements. Were it not for these notable elements, I would have said this book was just like most book club picks. And I would have hesitated to recommend it to anyone who wasn’t explicitly interested in the human interest-heavy general fiction. Because of the unique and thoughtful use and execution of these elements, I think Egan’s work elevates itself above “general.”. It even overcame my book club recommendation-based malaise. She opened up a whole new world of storytelling possibilities in my mind.

Egan has managed to craft a narrative about the rich complexities of the human condition. She captures the universal struggle to find ones place in a world that cares either too much or too little. Each character in Goon Squad has a laundry list of personal shames, both private and public. And they’re all just struggling to make it out the other side of life. If you want a cut-and-dried triumph of good over evil, this may not be the story for you. But if you’re looking for something a little more, Jennifer Egan has got you covered.

Rating:

A Visit from the Goon Squad
By Jennifer Egan
Knopf
ISBN: 0307592839
Published: June 8, 2010
Hardcover, Paperback, E-book, Audio