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 first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. 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 Kenya. Turn up the music, skip the college reunion and curl up with The Goon Squad instead.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.
triumph of technical bravado and tender sympathy. "If Egan is our reward for living through the self-conscious gimmicks and ironic claptrap of postmodernism, then it was all worthwhile. Egan's expert flaying of human foibles has the compulsive allure of poking at a sore tooth: excruciating but exhilarating too." Then expect it to lodge in your cranium and your breastbone a good long while." Expect to inhale Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad. Alan Cheuse, NPR's All Things Considered "Told with both affection and intensity, Goon Squad stands as a brilliant, all-absorbing novel for the beach, the woods, the air-conditioned apartment or the city stoop while wearing your iPod. "Egan's bravura fifth book samples from different eras (the glory days of punk a slick, socially networked future) and styles (sly satire, moving tragedy, even PowerPoint) to explore the interplay between music and the rough rhythms of life."
Features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human." "It ends in the same place it starts, except that everything has changes, including you, the reader." is one of the most talented writers today." "A rich and unforgettable novel about decay and endurance, about individuals in a world as it changes around them. "The smartest book you can get your hands on." Music is both subject and metaphor as Egan explores the mutability of time, destiny, and individual accountability post-technology." Like a masterful album, this one demands a replay." "At once intellectually stimulating and moving. Egan possesses a satirist's eye and a romance novelist's heart."
One of the Best Books of the Year: Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The Daily Beast, The Miami Herald, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Newsday, NPR's On Point, O, the Oprah Magazine, People, Publishers Weekly, Salon, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Slate, Time, The Washington Post, and Village Voice
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