A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

[Tuesday evening book club]

This review was written by David McMahon, a member of the Tuesday Evening Book Club.

This book is an interesting set of stories about a group of characters who meet at various stages of their lives and careers. Many of the characters are involved in the production or performing sides of the pop music industry, and they are impacted in various ways by the changes in tastes and technology.  The "goon" in the title refers to time, and the book meanders among various time periods between 1980 and about 10 years into the future (it was published in 2010). But the narrative is not in chronological order, chapters jump backwards and forwards in time, and the effect is kaleidoscopic, with the reader facing the challenge of reassembling the fragmented lives into sequence.

One chapter consists entirely of PowerPoint slides, written in the voice of a young girl talking about her family, and especially her brother wiht an Asperger-like obsession with the duration and effect of pauses in popular songs. This is consistent with the broader theme of time shifts throughout the book. A sub-theme of the book is the changing ethnic composition of the United States, and how characters interact with different generations of families. A seemingly unrelated episode on an African safari connects later with the daughter of one of the US characters not on the safari marrying the grandson of one of the African tribesmen supporting the safari, after the grandson had migrated and attended college in the US.

Critics loved it, and my book club was divided between love and hate. Some of the latter were alienated by the bad behaviour of some of the characters, or perhaps by the frequent references to recreational drugs (it was the music industry after all).

I found it a good read, but am suprised at the critical acclaim. It is entertaining and well-crafted, and can be read as a series of short stories. It's a little too tricksy for my taste. Our perception of time moves generally in one direction, and I found the attempts to dislocate the reader by frequent time shifts distracting from the underlying story and character development.