A review by documentno_is
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

adventurous lighthearted reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

 Semi-organized thoughts on A Visit from the Goon Squad, after reading it in around 3-4 days after being recommended this book for almost a decade. 

  • The interwoven narratives from many characters framing is starting to grate on my soul, I don’t understand why authors writing a character piece would go out of their way to distance me from their character’s voice by interweaving it with so many others. I think this fact would be less grating if I were reading it in 2010, and not almost 15 years later, I feel like in the past 5 years contemporary fiction is written almost exclusively in this style and it's not my favorite.
  • On the flip side I was interested in almost every character of this novel, and I felt they were all complex and related.
  • I liked how Egan changed the way she wrote narratives to fit a character’s voice. I liked how she would reveal information of other character’s stories in other chapters. Almost every character is an unreliable narrator and they are all loosely related, but you discover information about them chapters after they are the POV.
  • Ally’s chapter stuck out to me/ the stylistic geometric discovery of her surroundings was endearing.
  • The novel is way less about music than I thought it would be, given how this novel has been sold to me over the years. It’s mores about the industry of music- which I find uninteresting. Although as the book becomes more about music ( in Ally's chapter and beyond ) I liked it even less.
     
  • The last chapter gave me hives, like it sucked the remaining humanity out of the world she had created; turning very human experiences metallic and I’m sure that was intentional. Egan has a rightful belief that industry corrupts music and I’m on par to believe her although in the ending chapter I felt a little spoon-fed in that narrative. It kind of felt like my aging hippy teacher telling me to “be careful of those phones” and in some ways there is an undercurrent of truth but it feels like its being told by an outsider looking in.
  • This novel has been sold to me over the years as a book about- or at least adjacent to- music but I think it’s really a book about aging. It’s a novel that reckons with what happens to our dreams as the years go by, our relationships, our families, our desires, etc. When Egan allows me to see her characters grow up, dynamically reckon with the world they are in and the relationships they've built that is when I find the novel most successful. 

Ultimately I found this novel endearing at times, and grating at others. Egan's writing style is enough to inflate my rating, I found the prose fluid and entertaining even when her characters and thematic points didn't grab me.