Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.
Grateful and Thrilled that GOON SQUAD has somehow remained in the conversation after ten years:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Best Book of Decade
Time Magazine: 10 Best Books of Decade
ELLE: 15 Books that Defined the 2010s
Philadelphia Inquirer: 20 Best Books of the Decade
VOX: 19 Best Books of Decade
Literary Hub: The Best 20 Novels of the Decade
Visit the archived website for this book
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“Each [chapter] has its own language, its own tropes and terms, which Egan somehow manages to use and skewer at the same time, while maintaining the mystery that makes each person unique and worth knowing.”
National Post (Canada), 1/10/12
“When finally I read the first pages, I was transfixed. For the next 36 hours I found all other activities bothersome because they took me away from this marvellous book.”
The Independent (UK), 3/13/11
“The sparky disconnect between generations is sometimes rewired with brief but joyful connections.”
The Guardian (UK), 3/13/11
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“This is a difficult book to summarise, but a delight to read, gradually distilling a medley out of its polyphonic, sometimes deliberately cacophonous voices.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9/8/10
“I expect this brilliant, inventive novel to become enshrined. Such rash speculation is foolish, I know — we live amid a plague of bloated praise. But “A Visit From the Goon Squad” is emboldening. It cracks the world open afresh.”
Chicago Tribune, 6/6/10
“Jennifer Egan’s decision to render portions of her new novel, “A Visit From the Goon Squad” (Knopf), as a PowerPoint presentation is: Clever. Edgy. Groundbreaking.”
San Francisco Chronicle, 6/6/10
“Like a masterful album, this one demands a replay.”
Pop Matters, 2/21/12
“I don’t like this so called high brow versus commercial dichotomy because I feel it isolates both camps in an area that I’m guessing no one particularly wants to be in.”
Seattle Met, 1/26/12
“I just love not being attached to a machine…Maybe I lose something in terms of velocity, but I think I gain it in terms of freedom.”
BookTalk (UK) 1/10/12
“It feels like I am seizing upon details that suggest to me a life I don’t necessarily know, but is out there and has integrity. I could pursue it if I wanted to, but my goal is to keep my eye on this larger vision.”
The Nervous Breakdown, Nov. 13
Of Time and Tornadoes: an interview with Dika Lam
Satellite Sisters Show, 11/20
Word-Write Festival.
The Morning News/Robert Birnbaum, 8/18
“Let’s put it this way: I would hesitate to call anything satire in our culture. Or futuristic.”
Riff City/Channel Thirteen, 8/11
“Egan might be better than every music critic ever at describing both how music is made and what listening to music feels like.”
More Intelligent Life/The Economist, 8/5
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“The miracle of “A Visit from the Goon Squad” is that nothing—not even a section devoted to an extended PowerPoint presentation—feels forced.”
The Daily Beast, 6/29
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“Egan is an iconoclastic and original fiction writer, hewing to her own genre-bending path and creating fresh starts with each new book. Her finely tuned cultural antennae, her elegant language, and the unpredictability of her imagined universes make reading her work an adventure. Her work is supremely intelligent, psychologically acute, seriously playful, attuned to cutting-edge technology.”
The Paris Review, 6/25
Wall Street Journal, NY Region, 6/15
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“Brooklyn-based novelist Jennifer Egan has accomplished the tricky feat of using metafiction techniques without sacrificing old-fashioned storytelling.”