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A review by captlychee
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
3.0
This is what we could call a 'fix up', a collection of short stories put together to resemble a novel. It is a school textbook that I would never have picked up in normal circumstances. But I will say that I have't seen this quality of writing in modern fiction since I read [b:The Moons of Jupiter|25322|The Moons of Jupiter|Alice Munro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348831086l/25322._SY75_.jpg|1349667] far back in the mist of ancient 1992.
That being said, the stories do at least move on and some of them are pretty memorable. That is to ay, I can remember snippets of them. The whole thing uses the trick of telling the same people's lives at various times and in various cirumstances, so you could trae one story of one character through the stories if you felt like doing that much work. I didn't. Still, the timeline ranges from 1973 to around 2022, so there's a lot of room in there for many things to happen to people. They do, which was a pleasant surprise.
The final story, set in the near future which is nearly the present now, is a little creepy, as one of the characters is doing a postgraduate course in Marketing (proper name of the course) and has a snazzy new term for every nuance of speech. This must've taken a bit of effort and craft on the author's part, but maybe terms like 'disingenuous metaphor' are actually used nowadays.
The first story is so forgettable I simply cannot remember what it was about, what it was called, which of the characters was in it, or anything else about it. Maybe it didn't even exist. but, since I will have to dip into the thing again for various examples of postmodernism, I'll probably find out.
That being said, the stories do at least move on and some of them are pretty memorable. That is to ay, I can remember snippets of them. The whole thing uses the trick of telling the same people's lives at various times and in various cirumstances, so you could trae one story of one character through the stories if you felt like doing that much work. I didn't. Still, the timeline ranges from 1973 to around 2022, so there's a lot of room in there for many things to happen to people. They do, which was a pleasant surprise.
The final story, set in the near future which is nearly the present now, is a little creepy, as one of the characters is doing a postgraduate course in Marketing (proper name of the course) and has a snazzy new term for every nuance of speech. This must've taken a bit of effort and craft on the author's part, but maybe terms like 'disingenuous metaphor' are actually used nowadays.
The first story is so forgettable I simply cannot remember what it was about, what it was called, which of the characters was in it, or anything else about it. Maybe it didn't even exist. but, since I will have to dip into the thing again for various examples of postmodernism, I'll probably find out.