A Visit from the Goon Squad

Get ready for a “non-linear” book when you read A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.  A Pulitzer prize winning book, the book is a compilation of short stories revolving around many of the same characters throughout, but it is not necessarily in the order in which “life happens” to the characters.  Once again, NYU is prominently noted as the college of choice for one of the characters!  Many of the stories were set in the NYC vicinity with lots of action taking place in the West Village.  The first story was majorly intriguing and brought me right in – the story of Sasha and her date with “Alex.”  We learn about Sasha’s kleptomaniac ways after she enters the ladies room on her night out and steals from an unsuspecting tourist, whom she later is “guilted” into returning to her when she hears her story.  Sasha works for Bennie, whom we learn is a music entertainment executive who has numerous love interests in his life and was hoping to actually be a musician but never has that dream realized.  Sasha and Bennie have an affair in between Bennie’s marriages.  The short story weaves in many of the characters we get glimpses of throughout the book and as we learn more things about the depth and the complexity of each character.  This is a book all about the lives of this group who love music “of the ages” – grew up in the 70s and coming of age in the 2000s and beyond.  It’s as if the bits of information we garner from one story help fill-in the life of a character later on, and yes this is all about the characters and much less about “the story.”  It certainly was influenced by character-rich movies of the 80s.  Sex, drugs (even gold as a drug of sorts), and rock ‘n roll are at the core of this book.  The thirteen chapters go pretty quickly though not all are my favorite reads, as some of the characters aren’t as connected to me as others, hit or miss.  Very well written and understand why the award came her way for this read.  Will be a popular book for many years to come, especially with this generation of working class 50-somethings!