It’s a novel, but also linked stories, and also, in part, a PowerPoint presentation. The multitude of perspectives in A Visit from the Goon Squad invites the reader to piece together these varying stories into one cohesive narrative. It skips around in time and place and voice (if it has an anchor, it’s music, taking in the eighties post-punk scene in the Bay Area and the the New York music industry of the future). “A Visit from the Goon Squad” is both a serious work of literary fiction and a page-turner, a book that defies easy categorization. Like a lot of the vintage culture encoded in Jennifer Egan's punk-rock familial saga 'A Visit from. Portions of the book originally appeared in The New Yorker, in three stories: “ Safari,” “ Ask Me If I Care,” and “ Found Objects.” We chose the book for several reasons: A) We were all eager to read it, B) We received e-mails from several readers suggesting it, and C) It seems suited to April, a month when we’re still carrying a bit of our wintertime seriousness but ready to be dazzled by spring. Coming off our March celebration of Jon’s book, we turn to a book by another one of our own: Jennifer Egan’s novel “ A Visit from the Goon Squad,” which recently won the National Book Critics Circle’s prize for fiction.
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