What's that you say? Goon Squad ain't science fiction? Science fiction has to have aliens. I suppose you're right. It certainly helps. What if your story predicts the future but has no aliens? Or faster than light space travel? Or brain uploads? Well, then your science fiction wins a Pulitzer.
I jest, of course. No one in their right might would limit Goon Squad to the sf ghetto. It has so much more going on in it. But with all the time slipping and fast forwarding and past wallowing, it feels somewhat science fictional. Time is very important in this story. The titular "goon squad" refers to the vicissitudes of time. And time is a component of any futuristic, i.e. science fiction story. So the case could be made.
Is this book a time travel story? Not in the Wellsian sense. Time travel is not invented here. It is not discussed or used by the characters. But the reader travels through time. Backwards and forwards and we get to see the future.
Goon Squad is a mosaic novel. I know that because I just picked up that term over at Interstitial Arts where they've got an essay on the topic. What makes this book a mosaic is that each chapter is a short story in and of itself. One chapter was in fact published as a stand-alone last year in some lit mag, so there you go. Each little story has an arc and a main character. Each contributes to the main story arc but lives its own little life and its own little moment.
By moment I mean point in time. It could be an hour, a day, a week, or even several months. All the moments together cover a time span of probably thirty or forty years. Day one takes place at the birth of punk in the 80s.
Of course Day One does not happen at the beginning of the book. The beginning of the book is Sasha's story which takes place about half-way through the novel's time frame.
Sasha talks about her boss Bennie (a pop music mogul), her problem (kleptomania), and her date (guy by the name of Alex). In Sasha's moment she has just stolen a wallet out of a purse sitting on the floor of a restroom in a restaurant where Sasha and Alex are having their date. The woman whose wallet she has stolen panics and begs the other patrons to help her look for it. Stricken with guilt Sasha goes off to search and "finds" it back in the restroom. Sasha's moment is one of redemption. One of the few in the book.
The finale occurs years later after Sasha has been fired from Bennie's operation for stealing, after Bennie's been fired from the operation for losing his touch, and Alex has dumped his own musical career. It is now Alex's moment. In an odd turn of events, he has met up with Bennie years after Sasha's moment. Bennie is attempting to make a comeback with his old friend Scotty -- a has been guitarist. Bennie and Alex no longer know where Sasha is. Alex barely remembers her name. We do not feel bad. Not because we didn't like Sasha, but the novel isn't just about her. It's about many people and how their lives intersect briefly with each other. At the novel's end, when we see Bennie and Alex discussing Sasha, we don't feel cheated that we're not actually seeing her again because her moment has passed and she's moved on in her life. As should we all.
About a third of the way through the book, I thought I detected the usual flaw in multiple viewpoint stories: there's no one to identify with. Reading on, though, I realized that that is the strength of the book. Each story immerses us in one character's world. For that moment, the viewpoint is correct. When you switch to a new character you abandon the old one. You come back to that character eventually, but only peripherally. You're never again as cozy with them. It's like visiting a childhood friend as an adult, someone you haven't seen since you were a kid. You are tentative. You're not sure you want to be as close as you were before. Do you really want someone to remind you of your nerdiness? What about the pain you experienced when you said goodbye all those years ago? Do you really want to go through that again?
The book is mired in tragedy. Characters are victims of their past: early encounters with fame, or other powerful effects. More than that, though, coursing through the story is the ever present goon squad. Time changes everything including our belief in ourself, our future, and the things we hold as beautiful. The tragedy is life itself.
It's not all dark mood, though. The story has its moments of beauty as well. For instance, when Sasha, our kleptomaniac, devises a way to steal the sun. She is alone in Naples, friendless, moneyless, directionless. She gets by by stealing. It's obnoxious, especially when she steals from her own uncle. He goes looking for her (and his wallet), and finds her in a bare room. He sees the bleakness but also notices she has a wire bent into a circle hanging in the window. As the Neopolitan sun moves across the sky, it fits in the center of the wire ring. "See," Sasha mutters, eyeing the sun. "It's mine."
The scene makes you cry.
And then there's humor when the book heads into science fiction towards the end. The characters have made it through to the future world of pop music. Finally we get to see where we're all headed. What's it look like? Well, hit songs will not just sound like they were chosen by two-year-olds as they are now. In the future they actually will be chosen by two-year-olds. The children will be called "pointers" because when they hear a song they like, they point to the ipod or whatever it is that's playing the music. Once a pointer has chosen a song, millions of dollars are spent promoting it and what do you know, it becomes a hit.
So cynical. So hiliarious.
More important and subtle is the depiction of how future online behavior is going to change. Everyone in the future Internetworld will be polite. No one will express a strong opinion. Humans will make their very non-private online lives private by keeping their personal beliefs to themselves. Gone will be the flame wars of today. The homogenization of opinion will be a result of our slow realization that whatever we do and say is being recorded, archived, and available. If you don't think this is a reasonable extrapolation, consider your own personal moment when you've come across a diatribe of yours from a few years, months, or days ago. Tell me you haven't learned to bite your tongue.
The ending scene is priceless. Alex has thousands of online friends so Bennie hires him to create a viral campaign for Scotty. Using information on the likes and personalities of his friends, Alex knows who should be targeted and how to create a buzz before Scotty's first concert. It works. Scotty is an overnight success created by the smart use of social media. The number one reason why they love Scotty so much? He's so honest and he never sold out.
Actually that is true. Scotty never did sell out, but his people did.
So the goon squad comes and goes. You can't hide but you know what? You'll survive. Just like real life. And without the help of aliens. - reviewed by Sue Lange, author We, Robots
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Popular Highlights in this book
“I’m always happy,” Sasha said. “Sometimes I just forget.”Highlighted by 1,953 Kindle readers- “Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?” Scotty shook his head. “The goon won.”Highlighted by 768 Kindle readers
- “Sure, everything is ending,” Jules said, “but not yet.”Highlighted by 753 Kindle readers
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Incredible
From GoodReads, “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 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.”It’s a crazy quilt of a book. Each of the 13 chapters has a different time period and POV. Each is its own square, seemingly unrelated until you see the pattern. Then you bask in the fascinating connections. (Though I did break down and make an org chart - second picture.)It’s beautiful, gritty, compelling, and odd. We jump forward in some stories, back in others. We change POVs. One section is set in the dystopian future. And it all works! Even as an audiobook, Egan gives reference points to help readers orient themselves in the story.I heard about chapters with nothing but PowerPoint slides and wondered how that would play out in an audiobook. It worked! Between each slide, you hear a “Ka-chunk” sound like a slide projector carousel. I went to Egan’s website to see the slide show after finishing the book.I loved this Pulitzer Prize-Winning GEM of a book so much that I immediately picked up the “companion” collection, A CANDY HOUSE, published this year. (Review coming tomorrow).If you want to read A CANDY HOUSE, I strongly recommend reading this first.Trigger Warnings include drug use, addiction, suicide, and a particularly disturbing attempted sexual assault from the perspective of a bipolar attacker.I listened to this as an audiobook loan from my local library via the Libby App.
Top reviews from other countries
Anne Connolly
one of the best books of the century
Reviewed in Australia on August 21, 2021
