A review by kaitlyncookies
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Knowing this book won the Pulitzer, it is obviously an objectively important piece of literature, and yet it sadly wasn’t for me. Firstly, this is more of a short story collection vs. a novel. A lot of the time I didn’t understand the “point” of a given story/chapter. Yes, there were interesting characters and interesting situations, but because in my opinion it did not build to some grand meaning, I felt that it lacked closure or a greater overarching message. I may have felt differently if I had read this book in school and spent more time analyzing it.

I am left wondering what the reader is supposed to get out of this book. The title and certain quotes from the book suggest to me that overall it is about the inevitable passage of time and how our lives converge and diverge with those around us. But I guess I was just hoping for something more solid. It’s a shame because this book did have some amazing quotes.

“I saw her face with all the love still in it, no anger, no fear - none of the sorry things I learned to make her feel.”

“[…]Kitty’s skin-that smooth, plump, sweetly fragrant sac upon which life scrawls the record of our failures  and exhaustion-is perfect.”

“I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment if the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.”