Jennifer Egan

Working side-by-side for a record label, former punk rocker Bennie Salazar and the passionate Sasha hide illicit secrets from one another while interacting with a motley assortment of equally troubled people from 1970s San Francisco to the post-war future. By the National Book Award-nominated author of Look at Me.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Eli Alvah Huckabee

"Oh, sure," Lulu said. "BTs—blind teams—work especially well with older people. I mean"—she smiled—"people over thirty."

Sanja Grbic

You kneel beside her, breathing the familiar smell of Sasha's sleep, whispering into her ear some mix of 

I will never leave you, I'll be curled around your heart for the rest of your life

, until the water pressing my shoulders and chest crushes me awake and I hear Sasha screaming into my face: 

I think, The world is actually huge. That's the part no one can really explain.

That we have some history together that hasn’t happened yet.

different than expected, better than anticipated 

kari <33

Pretty much every creative writing professor (and my friend Billie) told me to read this book years ago, and they were all right! It’s like the classic example piece for an intro course but actually good, thoughtful, bland in a good way. The chapter I’ve seen before, the infamous PowerPoint, was actually my least favorite. It’s already so dated and not how I would wave tackle it, but it was bold at the time and a creative idea that could still be expanded on today. This is probably the first Pulitzer winner I have enjoyed and will praise.

★★★★ // a lovely piece on the inevitability of aging, growing old alone, and just this overall cloud of sadness that hovers over you each passing day.

Aine Meehan

** spoiler alert **
           Wow, this was fantastic. I do think if I had read it in my twenties I might have been like "huh?" It was all the better I think for me being older. The characters are so well developed and it's one of those books that shifts between timelines in such a way that you never get lost. Nearly read it in one go. Loved it. There was a kind of lesson in it too, I found it very uplifting. Yes we get older, but that's ok, sometimes our lives are better the older we get.

Peggy Walker

And this is why I am not on the committee for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Although many have praised the leapfrogging through time and from character, to me it felt as though several manuscripts had been ripped apart and the pages tben laid out in random order. The section told in Venn diagrams/Powerpoint slides gold an interesting sub-story, but was beyond gimmicky. I can't understand the purpose of the time-travel, and unfortunately by the end I was more exhausted than exhilarated. Pity.

I couldn't connect with the characters as much as I wish I did in a book like this but I enjoyed this nonetheless.

Truly a unique read! The narrative perspective shifts and experimentation in storytelling methods caught me by surprise — but once I figured out what was going on, I couldn’t stop turning the pages to see how it all came together

Elizabeth

Lynn

2 ⭐️ This book is incredibly odd. Throughout the book I had no clue what was going on or what the focus of the plot was. All chapters seemed to be standalones that had some brief cross-pollination. However, the big time jumps, extensive cast of characters and non-chronological timeframe, made it extremely difficult to follow a coherent plotline and form attachments to the protagonists. There is some beautiful writing and oddly accurate metaphors that I particularly enjoyed. The two parts, A and B, of the story mirroring the sides of a CD of vinyl is a nice touch, but overall the story was too haphazard and general for me to enjoy. Points for originality and intent, but only two stars due to chaotic storytelling, haphazard plot and bible-esque number of characters. This might be better on a reread.

Kristen Claiborn

I struggled with this book. From beginning to end I had a hard time trying to ascertain what this book was about. This book reminded me of the series finale of Seinfeld-what the hell is actually going on? The first chapter gives the reader something that resembles a story, but everything that follows was just a big ol' messy jumble of words. I wish I had not picked it up and wasted time reading it. The characters are about as likeable as dog pooh (except Lulu, I liked her and wanted more of her story). For all those readers who disagree, good for you. I'm glad this one "spoke" to you. It spoke to me too: it told me to put it down.

Jeannette Ordas

I probably should have swallowed this book in one big whole, but instead I read a bit before I went on holiday, some tiny smatterings while away, and the rest as soon as I got back. I liked how characters reappeared or intertwined in other people's lives in this bittersweet tale of growing up and getting old. It's clever and fun and isn't just one story but many - including one told in PowerPoint! Time is indeed a goon.

Amy Thibodeau

I thought this was brilliant: creative, fun, unique and generally just superb. One of the best books I've ever read.

One of my favourite books. A re-read that stands the test of time for me.

Sarah Erle

Garrett Jansen

A set of short stories that wind a narrative that hits a bit harder than you'd think, interrogating youth and the process of aging in a way that had me worried about the way I'm living.

Avery Baumel

Unlike anything I have ever read before, an absolute marvel of a book. It is incredible how each story curves and grows around a new one. Would’ve been 5/5 if not for the horrible text talk in the last chapter. Apart from that an absolutely flawless book, perfectly executed. 

Maria Davis 

I don’t think I’ve loved a book this much in a long time 

Emily Carruthers 

Trever

Overall I feel like this book was really good, really entertaining and sometimes vaguely haunting. The last chapter, however, I'm pretty sure is satire of the dystopian the-next-generation-is-bad stuff mixed with Egan's descriptiveness.

Samantha Chavez 

This book is a collection of people who are all somehow connected to one another. It’s about time passing and all the things that happen in between, how things changes and how they circle back around and how that’s all just a part of life. It’s about how little things stick with you and the important moments in life and the things you’ll be known for if you’re known at all. 
It was weird and cool and smart all at once.

Fraser Simons

I find that the best fiction tends to be so hyper focused on saying one particular thing, that it becomes about everything. A human experience. The condition of life. In this case: time. Our relationship to it; the process of constructing a life that I consider destiny or fate—man made, but robbed by puritans and given to god, as all Good things are. Sacrificed. 

This narrative reclaims that power and gives it back to the people. The effect that someone who you don’t remember for ages and ages can have on you. So much time has passed and your grey matter hasn’t made an association. But then, something happens and you’re right there. Connected. Both embodied and apart from who you were, while being the product of those inconsequential moments. 

The gravitas that every single chapter is built around is simply staggering. It says that what we do matters. We make and destroy lives at a granular level. While the goon comes for everyone, and some of these moments are irreparably sad—life and death stakes, playing for keeps with a throwaway comment or a squeezing of a hand, the compromise that settles and settled in the dregs of your soul. It also means that there is an inherent, beautiful and wondrous agency to the small creatures of our burgeoning lives. 

Nostalgia lives here, sure, but for once it isn’t trite.

Elizabeth Moore

I thought this book was fantastic, and was very surprised to see so many negative reviews!

In reviewing my list of favorite books, it's pretty clear that I have a strong affection for stories that feature very flawed, very "human" characters, and Good Squad is no exception. I found my heaven in this book as it's a jackpot stash of characters who literally lie, cheat, and steal.

What I found so wonderful about how Egan painted these characters certainly had to do with their inherent flawed-ness (is this even a word??) but it also had to do with how pained all of them were as they continued to make mistakes, do wrong, or lose struggle to stay connected with those around them. They all wanted redemption in some way, even if they in some cases did not do everything they could to achieve it. The more miserable the character so long as I get a look into their mind, the more I want to root for them. In this sense I tore through the book, rooting for everyone I met.

To the point about getting a glimpse inside everyone's brain, I loved the shifting POV lens used to tell this story because it got me so many different perspectives on characters, and really aligned me as a reader to the mindset of each person I got to meet. If the chapter told from Scotty's POV was told from Bennie's POV or a 3rd person omniscient or limited POV, I would have been super grossed out by him and had no sympathy at all. As it turned out, I was always hoping I'd get to see him come back in the story and wanted to know "how he was doing" as I would describe it to people when I told them how the book was going. I also loved Egan's choice to tell the story in a flipping, looping timeline because it really brought out the struggle for connection - human, musical, even connection with one's self - that all of the characters were grappling with. As I slowly made connections as a reader and fervently looked for them in every corner of the novel's text, I most urgently felt the character's own need to feel tied to something, make sense of time, and understand where they fit among the other humans in their life.

Time itself was an important character in this book, and I loved how this was manifested in the shifting timelines and the well-depicted settings that represent recent American mini-eras. Egan really impressed me with her ability to further personify the "old goon, time" by forcing each character to face the all-powerful prankster at one point or another in the story, no matter how long they had tried to avoid it. From leaving prison suddenly white-haired, to friends gathering around one's own death bed, to having to acknowledge someone who passed and left you long ago while you were forced to keep on moving, time came to everyone without fail.

The overarching theme of the story did not hit home for me until the very last page, and I loved how that happened as usually for me understanding a theme of a novel is a very gradual thing. I wonder if perhaps this is where the difference in my opinion of this book and more negative opinions is based, as I can see other takeaways that are far less satisfying than the one I took. The book could be read as a cheap commentary on how time has changed and how disconnected the current era is making us all; it could be read as an "all things come to an end" story where people don't grow up and can't get on with their lives and are thus doomed. Pretty boring and well-worn territory, so I get it and that would bug me too.

For me, the sentence "you grew up, Alex." was what got me and made me love this book. It is not the age we live in that takes our soul away and makes us lose who we are. It is not one mistake we made long ago that, if not made, would have made our lives perfect. It is not a failed romance, the loss of someone who is our other half, or being forced to grow up early that steals ourselves from us. It's simply time, and it will happen in every age, to every person, in every walk of life. One day, we will simply wake up and realize that our old,"happy" self is just far far away and there is no way to get back there. Except, perhaps, for music, the other resounding theme of the novel, which will always allow us a powerful but fleeting trip back to our best, worst, gone times that otherwise have been pulled far away from us by and old good when we were only looking at our next move ahead.

Daniel Cleveland

A little all over the place but still very engrossing

Stefanie Sugia

Review: http://thebookielooker.blogspot.com/2...

Kevin Bertolero

I'm sorry. THIS... won a Pulitzer?? Yikes.

Lea Marshall 

I don't really know how to put into words how I feel about this book. It's the type of book that you just need to sit with after you've read the last page in order to properly assess what just happened. I think the overall arc and message is that time creates these different versions of ourselves and each time something or someone has altered us. I think this book also touches on the idea of sonder; that every person (stranger, family, or friend) has a life of their own that continues without your presence. It also talks about how we as humans, in human relationships, impact and effect each other, as well as the trajectory of our lives. 

Something that I also found amazing, and very clever of the author, is how the timeline mimics memory and how fickle it can be. As I read the book, the names of various characters would sound familiar, but I couldn't recall how or what their relation was to the, essentially, 2 "main characters" until I had read farther into the chapter. 

A very fitting review, that I saw after I had finished the book, stated ...
"It ends in the same place it starts, except that everything has changed, including you, the reader."

A Visit from the Goon Squad

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