A Vist From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

 

There's a lot of buzz surrounding this book because it's getting nominated (and winning) a lot of literary awards. Usually this makes me want to run far, far away because books that are on award lists are typically over my head and make my brain hurt. I think I decided to give this book a try because a portion of it was based in San Francisco during the 70s....kind of a lame reason, but it's the little things that will draw me into a book.

The book reads like as if is a series of short stories about a group of people all somehow involved with each other. But each story couldn't exist without the story before it providing context to the current story being told (does that make sense?)

The main concept behind this book is time and how it affects us as we go through life. One of the characters actually says, "Time's a goon. You gonna let that goon push you around?" And thus a title is born...

The evolution of music plays a dominant character in this book. The story essentially revolves around a hot-shot music producer (Bennie Salazar) in San Francisco and the people he interacted with. We then learn more about these people through a "short story"/chapter. The really interesting part of this is that we learn about these people at different stages in their lives...so it gives us an opportunity to see how time and interactions with different people shape how we are in the future. I think that the author used the changing face of music as the background of the novel because it compliments the change that people undergo as they get older and experience different things.
*One of my favorite chapters was actually put into a Powerpoint. It was surprisingly a very engaging way to tell a story and weirdly very refreshing. 

So I made an earlier comment about part of the book being set in San Francisco...one of the things that I think I knew, but never really paid attention to is that the street that I currently live on (Polk St) used to be San Francisco's main gay neighborhood prior to 1970. I think that's an interesting factoid because I always assumed The Castro has always been "the gay area of town". And Polk St is now full of preppy white kids and moms with crazy fancy strollers.

Anyways, the book is unlike any other book I've read (and it's supposedly a "smart" book!)...and I vote giving it a shot.

Rank: B