Review 15: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

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.

Egan’s ability to inhabit such a range of different personalities and egos is truly impressive. Every character’s world feels rich in detail, and passed through a fully-formed, three-dimensional filter of that particular character’s brain. You sense that writing this must have been exhausting; not just spinning plates, but imagining the world from each plate’s dizzying perspective as it whirls.

The danger of this, of course, is that you get fully involved in one voice, and then that ends, and you have to change gear to start adapting to a new one in the next chapter. For people who are less intellectually bungled than I am, it might have been easier, but it took me a short time to adjust to each new chapter. The effort was absolutely worth it though. Each little story is compelling and carefully crafted, like chisel-cut jewels or Mini Eggs.

As a longtime fan of the word goon, my only complaint can be the lack of it. I was hoping for goons-a-plenty, but they were thin on the ground. Goon-dearth aside, though, this was a really enjoyable first foray into the work of Jennifer Egan, who is clearly a very accomplished and deservedly-lauded writer.

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