I’ve been remiss in my blogging as of late. I’ve been reading, but haven’t had time to capture my thoughts on each novel. So, now I’m going back a couple of months to write the reviews I should have written at the time.
First up is A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I finished just before Christmas. And, although I liked it at the time I read it, I have to confess that I needed to re-read summaries of the book just to recall some of the more salient plot points. And that should tell you something – in about a month, I forgot a great deal about this book. With a couple of pretty notable exceptions.
The most interesting and memorable aspect of Goon Squad is the narrative style. A series of 13 different characters each get their own section of the book to advance the plot from their point of view. These tales cover about 40 years, go well into the future and do not follow chronological order. Instead, pieces are stitched together in order of importance to character development. To provide an example, the first chapter of the book is devoted to Sasha, who’s in a therapist’s office to deal with her kleptomania. We later hear about Sasha at work from the section narrated by her boss, her college experience from an old friend who accidentally drowns in the Hudson River, her family life from her uncle who travels to Naples to rescue Sasha after she’s run away from home and is paying her bills through prostitution, and her later marriage as told by the point of view of her daughter.
Not only do you get to know characters from the points of view of several different narrators, who often have differing and conflicting impressions, but each narrator has their own story telling style. Each chapter is wholly different, not just because the point of view has shifted, but because the nature of the narrative shifts to fit the different people and their place in the story. Perhaps the most incredible example of this is the chapter narrated by Sasha’s daughter, who tells her story in a simple, direct fashion, as children are wont to do, using PowerPoint slides. In the hands of a lesser author, this would be nothing more than a cheap gimmick. But Jennifer Egan not only manages to make the chapter believable as a child’s perspective, but you really do get insights into the family dynamic using the medium of a slide deck, something I’ve never seen before in modern fiction. In essence, it works.
By virtue of the volume of characters, and the short amount of time each of them are allotted to share their perspective, it’s easy to forget portions of the plot. But a few characters, particularly Sasha, have a fairly well rounded arc. And although memorability is a problem for Goon Squad, I do give points for style, and here the book succeeds with aplomb.
