Jennifer Egan's spellbinding novel circles the lives of Bennie Salazar,an ageing former punk rocker and record executive,and Sasha,the passionate,troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts,the reader does,in intimate detail,along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs,over many years,in locales as varied as New York,San Francisco,Naples,and Africa.
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties,on her therapist's couch in New York City,confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later,we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage,then a runaway living in Naples,then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend.
We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life-divorced,struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son,listening to a washed up band in the basement of a suburban house-and then revisit him in 1979,at the height of his youth,shy and tender,revelling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardour for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent.
We learn what became of his high school gang-who thrived and who faltered-and we encounter Lou Kline,Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor,along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music,about survival,about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates.
In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to Powerpoint,Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both-and escape the merciless progress of time-in the transporting realms of art and music.
Publisher: Little,Brown Book GroupISBN: 9781780330969Number of pages: 368Weight: 298 gDimensions: 198 x 150 x 26 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'A must read. Irresistible. Fiction of the highest quality.'- Sunday Times
'It may be the smartest book you can get your hands on this summer.'- Los Angeles Times
'Exhilirating... arresting... brilliant. Turn up the music... and curl up with The Goon Squad.'- Washington Post
'A great work of fiction,a profound and glorious exploration of the fullness and complexity of the human condition... An extraordinary new work of fiction.'- The New York Press
'Egan's precise,calm underwater prose is a persistent pleasure.'- Daily Telegraph
'A delight.'- The Observer
Jennifer Egan
American writer Jennifer Egan is the author ofA Visit From The Goon Squad,The Keep,Look at Me,The Invisible Circus,and the story collectionEmerald City. Her stories have been published inThe New Yorker,Harper's Magazine,GQ,Zoetrope,All-Story,andPloughshares,and her non-fiction appears frequently inThe New York Times Magazine.
Visit the Jennifer Egan author page
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