A visit from the Goon Squad starts out quite alright but leaves you in the end rather unsatisfied. ( )

Well written but for my tastes it depends on its theme too heavily to do the work of providing cohesion for all the different set pieces; that time passes is too obvious and well-covered in literature to be very remarkable without more assistance. ( )

Hard to follow, but very good descriptions of modern musician life ( )

Wow. This is a creative, emotionally resonant novel. I loved it and was thinking five stars(!) until the last chapter, which left me cold. So I knocked a star off for an unsatisfying finish, but otherwise I can't recommend this enough. In some ways, it reminded me of [b:Let the Great World Spin|5941033|Let the Great World Spin|Colum McCann|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320561164s/5941033.jpg|6113503] because it has a large cast of characters who are loosely connected, and it works around a grand theme but sticks mainly to the details and feelings of everyday life. Colum McCann's theme, I think, was the multitude of individual people who make up the world and how unknowable all of us are (or something like that). Egan's theme, I think, is how we reconcile past selves with current selves, both our own and other people's.

What I found so powerful about this book was not just Jennifer Egan's great writing, great characters, etc., but the originality of the storytelling. Of course, we know this is the book with a chapter told in PowerPoint. That's one thing. But she also writes a chapter in the second person, jumps all around chronologically, and (my favorite) writes one chapter as a satirical celebrity profile. I felt like I was reading a truly uncommon novel (or connected short stories--whatever), which was exhilarating.

Instead of trying to reconstruct the plot, let's see if I can remember all the characters... There isn't a main character in the traditional sense, but the character with the most page time is probably Sasha, a red-headed girl who, when we first meet her, is a kleptomaniac on an unremarkable first date. She works as Bennie's assistant (some may argue that Bennie is in fact the main character). Bennie is a successful record label executive who is, like Sasha, troubled but functioning. We also meet Bennie's wife Stephanie and Stephanie's brother Jules Jones (the author of the hysterical celebrity profile). We meet Sasha's college friends, her Uncle Ted, and her children. Who else is there? There are Bennie's high school friends and Bennie's mentor Lou. We go on a safari to Africa with Lou, his children, and his girlfriend Mindy. We follow Stephanie's former boss, Dolly, as she meets a warlord and tries to repair his image by connecting him to a starlet (the same one profiled by Stephanie's brother). And finally, we end up with Dolly's daughter Lulu, Bennie, and the man who was seen in the first chapter as Sasha's unremarkable date. Whew.

This is a brilliant book, but I need to vent my dissatisfaction with the final chapter. In it, Egan describes a near future that is terribly bleak and not nearly as amusing or affecting as the rest of the book. Here is Egan's future:

1. Everyone is attached to "handsets" and texts each other with terrible spelling. (Duh.)

2. People are paid to promote products in secret. You never know if someone is really voicing their opinion, or just parroting for cash. (Depressing.)

3. Everyone is having tons of kids because "if there are children, there must be a future, right?" (Sad.)

4. What the babies like becomes the center of music culture. Babies are basically the main target demographic because they're the only ones buying music. (Ridiculous.)


To sum up: It's hard to end a great book well. No one wants it to end. So I think about the other 95% and say yes, I think Pulitzer Prize deserved. ( )

A sprawling and ambitious story of multiple characters over a long period of time, but that all have connections to a single timeline. The different writing styles from each character's perspectives all had good reasons for being distinct, but it does give a challenging bent to the reader that's trying to knit this together into a single plotline. As for the topical content, if you have interest in the recording industry, this could be intriguing, although Egan was certainly showing some of the darker sides of musicians and record label executives. ( )