A Visit From the Goon Squad

Ever since I saw that Jennifer Egan set one of her novels (Look at Me) partially in Rockford, I've meant to read her work. It wasn't until I learned that she won the Pulitzer Prize last year for A Visit From the Goon Squad that I decided to actually check her out. I absolutely loved the first two chapters and then began to get a little frustrated with it, only because I didn't understand the format when I began. Perhaps if I read the back of the book closer or had read a review, I would've understood the concept of the book and could have enjoyed it all the way through. It wasn't until almost halfway through that I finally "got" it. So here it is to save you the frustration: the novel is a portrait of two people's lives, but you only get their perspective once. (I kept waiting to hear from Sasha again and it was making me crazy that I didn't get to.) There is an entire cast of characters of people who know or meet these two characters, even if only briefly. So essentially the novel is a collection of related short stories that don't make up a linear story at all.

Overall, I loved the novel. Egan is a smart, witty writer and I liked what she was able to accomplish with the book. I have this habit of flipping through books before I read them and I saw there was a long Powerpoint presentation within it. I was a little worried about that, but turned out to love it. It was one character's chapter and she used Powerpoints as a way to journal which is a fascinating idea to me. I generally do not like short stories and yet, like The Women of Brewster Place, I can love small vignettes pieced together into a novel. (Though I can understand how some people could dismiss this concept as being overly literary.) I don't know what books competed with this novel for the Pulitzer, but to me, A Visit From the Goon Squad was entirely worthy of the honor.