A Visit From the Goon Squad

I  finished A Visit From the Goon Squad this week, and I am left with conflicting emotions.  It was my good friend's choice for our book club, and it took me by surprise, in part because I expected to love it, and I just didn't.   Goon Squad won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year and has garnered plenty of attention; I had read the first short story on my Kindle and I was excited to dive into it.  I quickly realized that A Visit From the Goon Squad is not an easy read.  In fact, it's not even a book I would recommend to many people, because it's a lot like work.   

Goon Squad inserts us into the lives of several characters, all of whom are connected, with the theme of the music industry running through the novel. The interconnected stories are told by different people, over a 50-year span of time, but none of the book is in chronological order. Fifty pages into it, I was muddling my way through the second big story, and not really enjoying it.  Thirty pages after that, I was intrigued - certainly enough to read the entire book.  The characters had not become any more likable, but I was finally getting the hang of it.  Egen's constant shifts in time and point of view made following the plot challenging.  Keep in mind that I read a lot - an average of two books a week, more during winter and vacation.  So to have a book still making me struggle after 100 pages is saying something.

My friend summarized it perfectly - she said that Goon Squad was not a book that you would enjoy while you were reading it, but that you would want to talk to someone about it after you finished.  As our book club chatted in the sultry July night, we each brought something different to the discussion.  But as we began to peel back the layers of Goon Squad, our discussion revealed far more than any of us had thought possible.

Therein lies the magic in such a unique book. I might not have enjoyed the journey, but I was very glad once I reached my destination.