Review: A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
I’ve wanted to write about A Visit From the Goon Squad for ages. In short: I love it. It’s brilliant. You must read it immediately.
The blurb:
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives 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.
The delay came about because, at first, I couldn’t get into it. That might have been because I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, or that I wasn’t giving it a good couple of hours kick off time (you should never start a book by reading the first 20 pages then putting it down). But whatever, I couldn’t make it stick.
Then something happened. I don’t know what it was, but out of nowhere I was hooked. These interconnected stories grabbed hold of me and I read the rest of the book in a couple of days. That doesn’t happen often. Not to me.
And I’m not the only one either. Egan won the Pultizer for Goon Squad earlier this year and the novel has been widely praised. It’s a literary pageturner. I can see what all the fuss has been about.
Apart from its unique and highly succesful structure – each chapter is a standalone story connected by characters whose lives cross and intertwine – the writing itself is wonderful. I often found myself lost in the prose, completely engrossed.
Again, this doesn’t happen often for me – I struggle to switch off the writer within. But I had no problem here. There are some stunning passages.
A Visit From the Goon Squad is playful, experimental almost (one chapter is made up of a PowerPoint presentation, which is surprisingly beautiful), but at its heart there is a fantastic story. Or collection of stories.
I’d happily read them all again.
How I read it
It’s worth noting is that I read Goon Squad in two ways: via a good old hardback book and through the standalone iPad app. I don’t think it needs to be one or the other – I just used whichever was convenient (or nearest).
The app is brilliant, by the way. Very nicely presented and lots of extras, including an audio version and author’s notes.
Win a signed hardback copy
Regular readers might remember the Goon Squad competition the book’s publisher, Constable and Robinson, ran last month on Write for Your Life. If you buy the Goon Squad app and leave a review, you can win a signed hardback edition.
That comepetition closes soon. Please feel free to enter. You stand an excellent chance of winning.
Funny, I was just telling a friend the same thing about this book earlier today. Took me three tries, and I’m now midway through it, and am also engrossed. It’s the first book I have read using iBooks on my iPad, which seems fitting. I wish I’d known about the app…publishers really need to be better at getting the word out about stand-alone book apps.
Thanks for your review.
The app is very good in this case, probably the best I’ve seen. I guess it’s tough for publishers to know where to put the marketing money when it’s always so tight at the moment. Glad you’re enjoying the novel though, it’s a smasher.