A Visit from the Goon Squad in Bound Together

May 25, 2011 Annet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-pure, weird, not-sure-about-this-one, new-york, wilderness-books-can-usa

Not quite sure how to rate this one, mixed feelings. It is an extraordinary work of interconnected stories going back and forth in time. About persons and how they evolve and develop over time. One story more appealing than the other, but an intriguing entirety at any rate. The ppt chapter, I thought… WTF, but I actually ended up liking it, a lot. It grew on me, turning the ‘slides’ and listening to the story of the daughter/sister in ppt environment. I loved the chapter about the uncle, looking ...more

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Jul 16, 2011 PattyMacDotComma rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, chcc-library, award-win-listed

Another book broken into pieces with different voices that didn't capture my imagination. I find it increasingly frustrating not to find a good read that has a beginning, middle and end but that isn't just a murder mystery or an historical romance. ...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Michelle rated it liked it

Overall I enjoyed this book. I think the author is a very talented writer who is able to change the point of view from character to character from chapter to chapter and each time I felt I was in the head of a new person. The story is written almost as if each chapter is a short story. Each is a snapshot of a point in time, about different characters and what they're experiencing. While these characters have overlap between chapters there is no set storyline. It's like looking through a photo al ...more

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Apr 18, 2011 Bucket rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary, psychology, 1001-read-all-editions, many-perspectives, reviewed, experimental, music, time, pulitzer-winners

Update (1/18/23):
I got a lot more out of this on a second read. The first time around I was in my mid-20s, and the impact of "time is a goon" and how aging and evolving change the meaning of the passage of time just weren't on my radar yet.

Now, this theme hit me hard. I was struck by the idea of pauses (in music, in the environment - the desert, in the jumps from one story to another) as not only time passing, but as impactful in their own right. Most directly, a pause in a rock song changes the Update (1/18/23):
I got a lot more out of this on a second read. The first time around I was in my mid-20s, and the impact of "time is a goon" and how aging and evolving change the meaning of the passage of time just weren't on my radar yet.

Now, this theme hit me hard. I was struck by the idea of pauses (in music, in the environment - the desert, in the jumps from one story to another) as not only time passing, but as impactful in their own right. Most directly, a pause in a rock song changes the song. The passage of time impacts life too. It's not just the events we experience or the people we meet that change us. The very fact of time's passage changes us too. The pauses are not silent (the music has the crackle of old recordings, the desert buzzes/drones with sound) and time's passage isn't either. It's gritty, it rubs on us.

Egan very inspiredly follows all this with a futuristic vision of youth as frictionless. Their music is clear and smooth, no recording remnants. They don't get tattoos or piercings. They don't swear. They live through their 'handsets.' They minimize their friction (with time and the world) to minimize their aging and, ultimately, to hold on to their powerful. Because to be young in our society is to be powerful even now, and in Egan's future no less so.

I also noted the accuracy/prescience of Egan's ideas about moral turpitude around truth and how much it matters. Back in 2010, there were inklings, but I don't think most of us had realized yet how flexible and flimsy 'truth' would become, politically and socially. Egan's portrayal of it is fairly innocuous (people pretend to like things or care about things for appearances and to increase their reach on social media). In our current reality, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Original review (6/11/11):
Egan won a Pulitzer in 2011 for this novel in stories. Each chapter is a self-contained short story from a different character's perspective. There is no obvious central character, though Bennie and Sasha seem to come up the most and all the other characters are connected to one or the other of them. The order of the stories is not chronological.

It's interesting to me that the most recent two Pulitzer winners are novels in stories. While I enjoyed 'Olive Kitteridge' more, 'A Visit from the Goon Squad' is certainly the more risky and modern book. I loved each story here in and of itself - each chapter is self-contained and beautifully written. The characters are gritty and flawed, and Egan does a great job showing what makes them tick without coming right out and saying it. The chapter done in powerpoint is stunning. I was worried it would be a gimmick but it works so well that I can't imagine it working any other way. Ditto the chapter done in the 2nd person - Egan created an excellent example of how the perspective can be done well.

Despite all that praise, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I do many others. I couldn't get a sense of the reasoning behind the order of the chapters until the very end and I still didn't feel all that engaged in the characters. It was interesting reading, and I loved analyzing the way Egan writes, but I wasn't swept up in most of the stories (exception: the powerpoint) and there are so many characters that none of them are central enough to make me really care. I think my taste in novels leans away from the postmodern.

Themes: music, technology, future, youth, relationships, characterization, experimental ...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Christina, Join Me on Storygraph! rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts on this book. I found it incredibly readable; I loved the way the story was told through a changing POV (many times of seemingly minor characters) and changing date. I actually read it really quickly. But, now that I'm finished, I have no idea what happened, no idea what it was about, other than the passage of time and how it changes you. I can't say there were any characters with whom I connected, or even liked.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that ...more

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Jun 14, 2011 Pat rated it it was ok

Almost gave this only one star, something I do not think I have done before. I like different and unusual, but this was too disconnected for me. Chapter 12 consisted of graphic organizers which was clever, but they were difficult to read on my Kindle. Not much for me to recommend to anyone, and I think I read somewhere that it was a Pulitzer Prize winner or some other award???????

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Jun 26, 2011 Michelle Stie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-fiction, characters-disenchanted-with-life, dysfunctional-characters, award-winners, cultural-commentary

It's been awhile since I've been flummoxed by a book. I think A Visit From the Goon Squad earned its critical accolades--the book deals with questions of time, memory, technology, and love in intersecting and interesting ways. I think I'm going to put it aside for a bit and come back to it later, now that I know how the narrative structure works. ...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Ashley Hart rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

I really enjoyed this book. It jumps back and forth through a timespan of a few decades, and switches character perspective every chapter. Each character is connected to another in some way, generally pertaining to music. You often get more insight into one character's story through another, or get told how certain character's lives are end up in the future. These are all aspects of the novel enjoyed. I did, however have a few problems with it. I found it to be painfully "hip", and I wasn't a bi ...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Suzanne Decker rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, borrowed

LOVED it. I want to go back to the beginning and read it again.

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Jun 07, 2011 Prudence rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book was pretty boring. I only read it for the challenge, and most of the chapters I had to struggle through. Some chapters captured my attention, but most of them were slow and hard to follow.

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