A Visit From the Goon Squad

Fiction

Oct 13

About the book

Author: Jennifer Egan
Publisher: Knopf (originally)

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

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Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)

My review

As someone who has twice read Olive Kitteridge, which was published two years before A Visit From the Goon Squad and is ALSO structured as linked short stories and ALSO won the Pulitzer, I have a hard time not comparing them to each other. But at the same time, they are such different books and both full stand up on their own. Olive tugs on the heart strings a bit more whereas Goon Squad plays more with form in fun ways. I really enjoyed both of them.

But you hardly need me to tell you that this book is good (see: Pulitzer). The ways it explores the inescapable passage of time, aging, connection, and more is masterful. I’m a big fan of linked short stories, especially when they really feel like a treasure hunt for cameos, as these do. I also LOVED the chapter told via PowerPoint slides (it’s a teenager’s journal), and I was especially glad to be tandem reading alongside the audio; the order in which the narrator read the information on the slides added a lot to my understanding.

Anyway, a really good, solid read. I’m sad that a last-minute conflict kept me from discussing this with my IRL book club; I’m sure it was a great discussion!