I picked up this novel (or is it?) at a charity book sale at the community centre in Mahone Bay this fall. I’d heard of it, vaguely, and it won the Pulitzer Prize back in 2010. I truly didn’t know what to expect.
Well, folks, this book is a Wild. Ride. I put it down (well, I started reading the physical book and then switched over to the audiobook on Libby), and I didn’t know what the fuck to think. It reminded me a little bit of the first time I saw Pulp Fiction – what just happened? It’s unique and unpredictable and crazy. I don’t know if it’s brilliant. Or drug-fuelled or drug-addled. Or did the author forget to take her Ritalin? It’s all over the place (and time), and yet comes full circle. It’s hopeful (people change, mature, make real connections) and full of despair, violence, rationalization, narcissism, cynicism, betrayal, and self-destruction.
Author Jennifer Egan creates a series of barely connected short stories that hops between narrators, places, and timelines in a random, dizzying manner. In the middle of the book I started wondering whether it was akin to Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, which I will always contend is a brilliant novel of chapters that are standalone short stories. What makes Olive Kitteridge a novel (vs. simply a book of short stories) is the through line of the main character, Olive Kitteridge, herself. She is the anchor of every story, even if she is only a tangential character in it. The book revolves around her, her town, and her worldview.
Goon Squad has virtually no through line. It’s more like a hopscotch game that goes in multiple directions, violating the time-space continuum constantly. I would definitely argue it’s more a series of mildly related short stories rather than a novel.
But then I read the NYT review of Goon Squad and laughed at this quote:
Whether it is a novel or a collection of linked stories is a matter for the literary accountants to tote up in their ledgers of the inconsequential.
And I think that sentiment is true. Whatever form the book takes, its substance is more important.
I won’t do a plot summary because there is no plot, really. It’s inexplicable, but intriguing. There are characters who show up repeatedly, tangential characters related to those repeat characters who snatch the spotlight, and then characters out of the blue – like a genocidal African dictator who needs some PR help, or a down-on-her-luck actress who helps prop the dictator up, until she doesn’t.
My book club is talking about this book later today, thank goodness. As soon as I finished it, I wished I had someone to chat with about it. I’m curious what they make of it.
UPDATE: Half the book club really liked it, found it innovative and a glimpse into a world they otherwise would never have visited. The remainder: DNF. Didn’t relate to the characters, found it confusing and hard to follow.