Interwoven Lives: A Review of 'A Visit from the Goon Squad'

There are so many things I like about Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, it’s difficult to figure out where to start. There are many characters in the novel, and I can only think of a handful whose lives aren’t intricately laid out for the reader. Not only are these characters interesting and full of life, but they are all intertwined with one another throughout. The novel jumps through time to each of the characters in various points in their lives, in a way that highlights the peaks and valleys of their lives. One of the things I loved about the novel was that the jumps through time were not random. Each temporal shift connected to the chapter prior, or the one after. A short blurb of conversation or thought in one section about

The way the novel jumps around in time helps it to create a sense of timelessness when it comes to the characters. Because most of the novel takes place in the past (and starts out somewhere near the present), the third person narrator of some chapters isn’t afraid to pull back and look at the grand scheme of the character’s lives. One time where this is particularly noticeable is when two characters are playing on the beach as children, then all of a sudden the reader is given a full look at one of the child’s (mostly tragic) life up to adulthood. In this way, A Visit from the Goon Squad is not afraid to mix the tragic with the humorous, or place tense scenes next to more lighthearted ones. This makes the novel feel more like an examination of real people’s lives. Life does not consist of one solid emotion at a time, its many emotions all right next to each other, and us there somewhere among them trying to put them all in order in our heads. The novel replicates this with stunning accuracy, forcing the readers to care about the characters and their stories even

It’s a novel that has a little bit of everything for everybody. The only reason I didn’t give the it a 10/10 is because it’s hard to nail down who the main characters are (even though I would argue that with so many great characters, there really doesn’t need to be a main character), and there are some sexual scenes in the novel I found to be semi-unnecessary, which might make some people dislike the whole story. However, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who want a genuinely fantastic story to read, people interested in a novel full of vibrant, realistic, and sometimes flawed (in a good way) characters, or anyone with some time to kill for long stretches, because they won’t want to put this book