A Visit From the Goon Squad is an unusual book, a series of thirteen loosely connected stories that range across time, narrator, tone and tense. Perhaps Egan described it best herself when she called the book her homage to the concept albums of the 70s and 80s. A literary Spiders From Mars if you will. It’s a hard road to walk down and still keep the audience interested, but it’s one that Egan has excelled at, compelling our attention despite, or perhaps because of, the shifts.

The first story in A Visit From The Goon Squad introduces the two characters who remain at the core of the novel. Sasha is a kleptomaniac, out on a date, and struggling to cope with her compulsion. Bennie is her boss, mentioned only in passing. A music producer with some strange habits, mixing gold flakes into his coffee and spraying his armpits with insecticide. The twelve stories that follow shift in and out of their lives, and the lives of the people around them: Bennie’s teenage friends, the producer who got him into the industry, Sasha’s uncle and even eventually her chid all feature as narrators within the book

With such consistent shifts in focus, it sometimes feels as though we don’t get to spend enough time with each character. In the end though, Egan’s sense of timing is masterful and most chapters function like a good song. You’ve enjoyed what you’ve experienced, but you’re left longing for just a little bit more. It’s therefore always very welcome when previous protagonists appear in other chapters, like recurring motifs, letting you see more of their lives and how others see them, rather than just how they see themselves. This is particularly interesting in Sasha’s case, as her internal turmoil is at great odds to the respect and love she is viewed with by others.

The Goon Squad of the title is time and this is the primary theme of the novel. What happens to us over time, what changes a life can take and what distance can bring. The shifts in time between stories showcase this and let the reader see just how dramatic the changes in situation and personality can be, over the course of a life, or even a few years.

The language of A Visit From The Goon Squad is wonderfully effective. The more experimental chapters aside, there is a naturalistic and easy feel to the writing and interactions between characters rarely feel forced, no matter the situation. Each protagonist is quite uniquely formed and their interactions with friends and colleagues individual but, across all of these changes, they always feel like real people. The book is at its strongest when it sticks to this fairly straight storytelling, as Egan’s handle on people is wonderful to experience, but even the more experimental chapters (a Powerpoint presentation, a David Foster Wallace parody) keep the characters paramount and thus keep the reader involved in these lives we’re sharing moments with.

There was unfortunately one chapter that I felt didn’t measure up and, regrettably, it’s the final one. A look forward at the future of New York and of the music industry, it features a painful amount of ‘text speak’ alongside the image of babies and toddlers becoming the primary (almost only) market for music. Part of my distaste for this was a personal dislike for both of those concepts, but it also felt like there wasn’t anywhere near the emotional resonance or humour in this chapter that had so infused the rest of the book. Even the characters felt stilted, and never instilled the care, the desire to know all about them, that I’d felt everywhere else, and it was a disappointing end to an otherwise exciting novel.

The final chapter aside, this is a remarkably impressive work, both technically and emotionally. It’s a testament to Egan’s skill that, despite the book’s unusual nature, it is a joy to spend time with these characters and with this effortlessly enjoyable language.

-Sky Kirkham

A Visit From The Goon Squad was the 4ZzZ Book Club book of the month for June 2011. The interview the Book Club did with Jennifer Egan can be found at our podcast page