A Visit From the Goon Squad
- a novel by Jennifer Egan (2010)
Book Review and Reflections
The
"goon squad" visited me the other day when I finished this Pulitzer
Prize winning book and after catching my breath immediately wanted to
start it again.
The audiobook experience in particular was immersive, and narrated by Roxana Ortega with the subtle nuances and voice inflections that were uniquely performed in the narrative and in every character.
“Pitch perfect.... Is there anything Egan can’t do in this mash-up of forms? Write successfully in the second person? Check. Parody celebrity journalism and David Foster Wallace at the same time? Check. Make a moving narrative out of a PowerPoint presentation? Check.... Although shredded with loss, A Visit from the Goon Squad is often darkly, rippingly funny. Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.... No one is beyond the pale of her affection; no one is spared lampooning.... For a book so relentlessly savvy about the digital age and its effect on how we experience time (speeded up, herky-jerky, instantaneous, but also full of unbearable gaps and pauses), A Visit from the Goon Squad is remarkably old-fashioned in its obsession with time’s effects on characters, that preoccupation of those doorstop 19th-century novels.” (Will Blythe, The New York Times Book Review)
“If Jennifer Egan is our reward for living
through the self-conscious gimmicks and ironic claptrap of
postmodernism, then it was all worthwhile.... A deeply humane story
about growing up and growing old in a culture corroded by technology and
marketing.... [A] triumph of technical bravado and tender sympathy....
Here, in ways that surprise and delight again, she transcends slick
boomer nostalgia and offers a testament to the redemptive power of raw
emotion in an age of synthetic sound and glossy avatars. Turn up the
music, skip the college reunion and curl up with The Goon Squad instead.” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post)
With the 7 day Audible free trial get a free audiobook download. Then you can still cancel and keep it. Life may never be the same after a visit from the goon squad.
Free download of A Visit From the Goon Squad >
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