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A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by: (author)
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail,... show more
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.  

źródło opisu: Knopf Doubleday
źródło okładki: Knopf Dobleday
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Format: papier
ISBN: 9780307592835
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday
Edition language: English
Bookstores:
Community Reviews
Url Phantomhive
Url Phantomhive rated it
4.0 A Visit From The Goon Squad
We were doing Secret Santa last month and I wanted to get something else for a change, so I asked the giver's favorite book, which landed me with A Visit From The Goon Squad. Not something I'd actively seek out or had come across before, but all the better for broadening my view. Definitely a succes...
Literary Sara
Literary Sara rated it
At first, I was into it. The characters were interesting, had cool jobs and slick lives, but were relatably and sympathetically troubled. Then each chapter brought a new character, and it was a little hard to keep track of at first but I got the hang of it and still wanted to keep going. I apprecia...
My Journey to Become Pretentiously Literate
My Journey to Become Pretentiously Literate rated it
3.0 A Visit from the Goon Squad
A witty, nostalgic, bittersweet collection of stories that isn't afraid to play around with timelines and styles of narration. Despite the rapid changes between chapters and the large cast of characters, this book is quirky enough to keep you hooked. "A Visit from the Goon Squad" follows a large ens...
Read All The Things! Reviews
Read All The Things! Reviews rated it
3.0 A Visit from the Goon Squad
This collection of linked short stories centers on Benny, a record executive, and his assistant, Sasha.The writing is poetic, and it’s worth reading just for that, but the stories themselves are . . . "meh." They all melted together in my mind because they felt very repetitive: music, drug use, sex,...
moving under skies
moving under skies rated it
3.0 A Visit from the Goon Squad
Once again,my severe short story allergy continues to drag down my opinion of probably-excellent work. Sure, this was a beautifully written, exciting, intriguing meditation on music & aging... until the story ends and I have to transition bumpily to the next.
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