A Visit from the Goon Squad

This novel is made up of what at first seem like merely interlocking stories. The underlying theme is music and authenticity, and the way people in modern life cling to music as a way to hold onto what feels genuine. Some stories are set in the early 1980s, some are set in the future. In time, you come to see how the characters are more closely connected that they seemed initially. But each chapter still stands on its own, except maybe for one that's written in PowerPoint (yes!), and that one works a bit better in print. The narrator is fine, nothing special, but the novel really sneaks up on you, and it ends up feeling like it's about everything, in the way really great novels do.

I agree with other reviewers -- this narrator is OK but not great. But it doesn't matter how great she is, the PowerPoint chapter (12, second to last) is a failure in audio. It it is worth timing your "reading" to be near a computer for it. The on-line version available at the author's web site is in color and includes sound clips from the songs that are referenced and is by far the preferred medium for this chapter. The black and white PDF available from audible is much less entertaining and captures less of the author's intent. The audio version collapses into boring nothingness for the last 3 slides in the PowerPoint -- they are graphs, and the narrator "reads" every data point! This is ten minutes of meaningless tedium. The producers of the audio book deserve a big fail for not coming up with a better solution to that.

As to the book, my response was meh through much of it. I could recognize her talent as a writer, but found it hard to really "get into" disjointed stories that were about different characters and hopped around in time. After I got to the end (including the PowerPoint chapter) I could see what she was about, and liked it better on reflection than as I was going through it.

Jennifer Egan (don't miss her 2007 THE KEEP) has created a map of trail-offs in A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD. It's a study of once-connected characters' paths in, around and out of the curious corners of the b-grade music industry. These are compelling personalities whose respective journeys take darkening swerves past youthful dreams into some very grown-up ditches -- or just coast to sad standstills at bleak intersections. The problem in the audio presentation is Roxana Ortega's narration, which seems to be calculated as a mall-chick's dreamy reminiscence, a latter-day Valley Girl on a determined talking streak. She strays into the "many voices" effort, and her stereotypic stabs at male characters' voices hit you like blunt objects falling off a shelf of baseball trophies. She carries in some mispronunciations, too, including Ralph Fiennes' first name. So what do we need in a narrator? Listen to the work of Campbell Scott and Laurie Anderson, two of our most accomplished theatre artists. They read their books and respect their listeners' intelligence. They don't try to play each character, no cast-of-thousands arrays of funny voices, no overlays of "'tude" on the work. Clearly, Ortega isn't untalented. And it may be that she was directed toward this one-woman-show mistake. When did narrating a novel turn into a job for Anna Deavere Smith? Above all, note that Egan's book deserves a listen for its own serious merits. Don't skip A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD because of Ortega's narration, just "listen through it" whenever you can, to hear Egan's own eloquence at work.

'Sure, everything is ending, but not yet.' This is probably, technically, a 3.5 star book, but I enjoyed it at the cellular-level, so I'm rounding up.

Positives: Great characters, interesting narrative, funky structure, great prose. Negatives: A little too self-aware. In many ways reading Egan is like reading a chopped up, skinny jeans version of Jonathan Franzen. In many ways that makes this novel better than 'Freedom' (a novel that shares a lot of 'Good Squad's' post-9/11, hipster-NY resonance) but not always.

There was one chapter that even reminded me a little bit of Chuck Klosterman and another chapter that gave me a sharp DFW vibe. Anyway, overall an enjoyable read.

What an imaginative work! It took my thick brain a bit of time to get the picture. I am sure I would benefit from a second reading w/o worrying about who is doing what to whom! This was one of the most creative works I have had the pleasure to try to figure out while enjoying the character struggles that are so much the same for all of us to some degree. It did seem like so segmented chapters put together, but it is a book that I would (do) strongly recommend to friends. Thank you Jenifer

This book is brilliantly conceived and almost perfectly written. Egan's her own person, but she reminds me of Veronica Geng as a comparable talent. What a treat is was to go with her into her imagination.

This is one of the best books I have ever read (or listened to)! The character development is exceptional, and the interconnections between characters as the story shifts in time, is brilliant. The narrator is very gifted, making each character distinct. It is a complicated story and I had to listen carefully so as not to miss any of the subtle threads that connected the various scenes. Very, very well done. I understand why she won the Pulitzer for this one!

You might recognize some of the stories from magazines. While the odd circumstances seem to standout, the stories to me seem to be about actual humans. The series of stand-alone but yet interconnected stories adds another level and forces the listener to pay attention. While I have heard better narrators, this one is not really that bad- very clear and not distracting which is about 90% of all I expect anyway. The only complaint was that in one story, her voice conveyed a very snarky female voice for what was a male narrator but otherwise competent.

Oh, how I tried to get through this. Hated the reader, with her breathy whisper and heartily fake male voices. Hated the pretentious writing. All I can say is that I saw a young and fatally hip guy reading this book on a crowded subway who tried to beat an elderly woman to an empty seat. He seemed to be enjoying it....

While the author brilliantly manages to switch between voices, decades, perspectives and writing styles, the narrator doesn't manage to keep up. Ortega simply doesn't have the range necessary to pull a book like this off. Would have been much better if read by a larger cast, as was done in
Let the Great World Spin by Colum Mcmann