The first two chapters, which follow record executive Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha, didn't immediately grab me - Sasha is spending time with her therapist to overcome a need to shoplift and Bennie is a washed-up former musician desperately clinging to his youth. It feels familiar. But once the novel starts jumping back in time - to Bennie's days as a punk rocker, to Sasha's days in college - is when A Visit from the Goon Squad becomes an amazing work of complexity and intertwining lives. Many of the chapters could stand alone as short stories, but, like Olive Kitteridge , all of the characters are interconnected.
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a novel that requires a fair amount of focus and flipping backwards, as there are times you think "wait, where have I heard this name before?" Voices change, from a chapter told in the second person, one told as a David Foster Wallace-esque "news" story (complete with footnotes!), to a chapter that is a series of charts and graphs. While the latter sounds bizarre, it provides an emotional payoff to those who have read the story from beginning to end. I also loved the asides where Egan reveals what happens to minor characters in the future, and then jumps back to the present tense.
Finally, the music industry is a great lens to explore aging and change, whether it's the punk culture of San Francisco in 1980 or a future where children essentially decide what music becomes popular. At one point, Bennie muses that "nostalgia was the end - everyone knew that." But who hasn't thought wistfully about the days of the music of your youth and thought "now, that was real, not like the trash kids these days listen to."
A Visit from the Goon Squad was a welcome relief from the lackluster books I've been reading, and highly recommended.
