A review by heyitsab
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
2.0
I had such high hopes for this book and was so sorely disappointed.
For the most part I felt like the book was veiling tired, predictable story lines and one-dimensional characters in the guise of an "innovative" writing style that, by three chapters in, just seemed pretentious and gimmicky. It was like Egan was screaming, "Look! This chapter's written in the second person! And this one's a gossip column! And this one's a PowerPoint!" while begging me not to pay attention to the worn out theme (time passes, people get old- who knew?!) and a cast of stock characters. Though to be fair, the PowerPoint chapter did live up to the hype.
Egan's character descriptions sound like they come straight out of a first year writing seminar: Step one, establish this character as "unconventional" by describing their appearance and "edgy" choice of clothing. Step two, establish this character as smart with paragraph-long descriptions of their academic interests and unabashed name-dropping of people in that field. She completely fails to let her characters feel anything or inspire any sort of emotion in her audience. Instead she signals what I assume are supposed to be "emotionally charged" moments with clumsy references to 9/11, mentions of a character's previous suicide attempt, or some sort of realization that time has passed/will pass at some point.
Two stars because I didn't completely dread picking it up.
For the most part I felt like the book was veiling tired, predictable story lines and one-dimensional characters in the guise of an "innovative" writing style that, by three chapters in, just seemed pretentious and gimmicky. It was like Egan was screaming, "Look! This chapter's written in the second person! And this one's a gossip column! And this one's a PowerPoint!" while begging me not to pay attention to the worn out theme (time passes, people get old- who knew?!) and a cast of stock characters. Though to be fair, the PowerPoint chapter did live up to the hype.
Egan's character descriptions sound like they come straight out of a first year writing seminar: Step one, establish this character as "unconventional" by describing their appearance and "edgy" choice of clothing. Step two, establish this character as smart with paragraph-long descriptions of their academic interests and unabashed name-dropping of people in that field. She completely fails to let her characters feel anything or inspire any sort of emotion in her audience. Instead she signals what I assume are supposed to be "emotionally charged" moments with clumsy references to 9/11, mentions of a character's previous suicide attempt, or some sort of realization that time has passed/will pass at some point.
Two stars because I didn't completely dread picking it up.