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sean_kennelly 's review for:
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
The density of this book only becomes apparent as you reach the second half. Each chapter is about a different person, sometimes in a different tense, always connected somehow with the characters that came before them. Sometimes this connection appears to be a loose one, but as we delve further into these lives we see how they are all masterfully interconnected. These people touch each other’s lives in minuscule or massive ways.
This book gives off a kind of melancholic aura, as it’s characters wrestle with lives that never quite live up to their promise. Happiness is in their lives too, but always on the periphery - it hovers on the edge of our vision and is absent when we turn to look.
Most of the stories revolve around the characters from the first two chapters - Bennie, a music producer and industry heavyweight, and Sasha, his troubled kleptomaniac assistant. Through them we jump forward and backward in time, to their teenage friendships and their autumn years. Their partners, exes, friends and family all drift in and out of each other’s lives as they chase their own happiness. Herein lies the connective tissue of this book: personal happiness. Each character meditates on it, strives for it, misses it, obsesses over it. And the other great theme of this novel, growing up. We glimpse the trajectories of their lives through time, as they lose or fulfil their potential, burn out or settle down. It’s breathtaking to witness so much living in one short book.
This book gives off a kind of melancholic aura, as it’s characters wrestle with lives that never quite live up to their promise. Happiness is in their lives too, but always on the periphery - it hovers on the edge of our vision and is absent when we turn to look.
Most of the stories revolve around the characters from the first two chapters - Bennie, a music producer and industry heavyweight, and Sasha, his troubled kleptomaniac assistant. Through them we jump forward and backward in time, to their teenage friendships and their autumn years. Their partners, exes, friends and family all drift in and out of each other’s lives as they chase their own happiness. Herein lies the connective tissue of this book: personal happiness. Each character meditates on it, strives for it, misses it, obsesses over it. And the other great theme of this novel, growing up. We glimpse the trajectories of their lives through time, as they lose or fulfil their potential, burn out or settle down. It’s breathtaking to witness so much living in one short book.