From A Visit From The Goon Squad , Past Me expected light-hearted whimsy and comic plot twists. I based this on its title and the book cover. Present Me laughs in the stupid face of Past Me, for being such a clunk-headed dope, because it turns out that Jennifer Egan’s breakout hit novel is nothing of the sort. The structural style is similar to that of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing , with each chapter covering the perspective of a different character experiencing a different event in their life. Where Gyasi sought to show the depth of history and the way cultural influences trickle down a family tree, though, Egan shows breadth – all the characters covered live within a couple of generations of each other, and so the device is more used to outline the way that different people with wildly varying motivations can converge in a few chance meetings to influence each other’s lives, circling around two key characters, Sasha and Benny. It’s less a family tree than an acquaintance hedge. ...
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