Forget all the Acclaim and Simply Enjoy "The Goon Squad"

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A really wonderful book that somehow simultaneously manages to:
1) live up to sky-high hype,
2) deliver unexpected twists in spite of massive media coverage, and
3) be a page-turner while being about as uplifting as watching ten consecutive episodes of Frontline.

This is one sad novel-in-time-fragments, yet I couldn't put it down. There's no "plot" to speak of, just the exploration of characters and the connections between those characters over a huge swath of time and many different time-periods. Those connections, relationships and people are so carefully drawn and finely crafted that I could have kept reading forever.

Occasionally the book missteps into overly broad satire -- and by "overly broad" I mean that the satire becomes situational and somewhat heavy-handed for my liking. Most of the time Jennifer Egan's satirical instincts are deftly embedded in character and relationship, letting readers draw meaning for themselves, but in a couple of notable spots the characters get too thin, the situations too over-the-top, and the whole affair strains with effort. Most notably I'm thinking of "Selling the General" (which is the only chapter I disliked) but I also include in this the final chapter, which (while also being beautifully written and terribly sad and pretty daring) struggles to make its points within character & relationship, and moves outside of that successful formula to comment in ways I didn't love. The vast majority of the book was so absolutely gorgeous with subtlety, as perfectly subtle as anything I've read -- that I did find myself ever so slightly disappointed that, in the final chapter, the human characters were too shallow to sustain The Commentary.

That said, 95% of this book is writing so pure that it fills my heart with both appreciation and rank jealousy. "Elegant" is the word that most aptly comes to mind. I devoured this book in a week flat, am filled with thoughts and reactions to it, and have just had a long, thoughtful discussion about it with my wife (who also loved it). It's hard to ask for anything more from a book. Further, it's hard for me to think of a book recently I've enjoyed -- or engaged with -- more.