For as long as we’ve owned the bookstore (coming up on five years!), for as long as we’ve been writing book review columns (ditto), and ever since I discovered my favorite novel in a used bookstore in Denver (ten years ago), I’ve been singing the praises of Jennifer Egan. In the summer of 2007, I wrote one of my first reviews for the Gazette on Jen Egan, on being a fan-girl of her writing, and specifically, on the merits of her first novel, The Invisible Circus. The quote that caught my eye, convincing me to pick it up in the first place, still holds as true now as it did a decade ago: author Pat Conroy said of The Invisible Circus, “If there were any justice in the world, no one would be allowed to write a first novel of such beauty and accomplishment.”
To anyone and everyone who would even half-listen while browsing in our fiction and literature section, I’ve extolled the virtues of Jennifer Egan, her writing, her future potential. I evangelize readers into becoming Egan fans just as passionately as any missionary – reciting the Conroy quote; telling them how Circus was quite possibly my favorite novel of all time and heavily implying the weight that had coming from a crazy bookstore lady like me; informing people how her second novel, Look at Me, was a finalist for the National Book Award; and finishing with the confident prediction that Jennifer Egan is a novelist to watch, because some day she will win the National Book Award.
This past week, Egan’s latest novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
I guess I overshot in my predictions. The National Book Award is a highly-respected honor for American writing, but the Pulitzer Prize is awarded for many different kinds of American achievements, and is the erudite grandfather of the more recently created National Book Award. As for Jennifer Egan, I feel almost as proud as though she were my best friend, or I were her agent. I know my fan-love may be a more than a little nerdy, and probably a little disgusting, since I’ve only emailed with her a few times and never met her in person, but I can’t help myself.
To be honest, before I read it, I wasn’t certain I would like A Visit from the Goon Squad. I’m so attached to The Invisible Circus that no other novel, not even the others penned by Egan after Circus, have made the same impact on me. I knew, however, that even if I didn’t love Goon Squad, that I would no doubt appreciate Egan’s skill. One reason that Egan has been “an author to watch” is that she isn’t afraid to experiment: each book she’s written is so different from the others. Certainly the comparison between her first novel and her latest novel provides the perfect example. The Invisible Circus is bittersweet, lovely, heartbreaking, focusing the complicated layers of family relationships and the legends of love we build around those we have lost. Circus is a traditional, narrative novel, one I frequently recommend to book clubs and almost exclusively to women. A Visit from the Goon Squad, on the other hand, is an ambitiously-structured ‘novel’ of loosely interlocking stories. The relationships between the characters revealed in each chapter are subtle, clever, uncomfortable, and yet, ultimately, extremely satisfying.
A Visit from the Goon Squad focuses primarily on Benny, an aging punk-rocker turned record company owner-manager-producer, and on his assistant, Sasha. From the beginning, the reader learns of their shameful, private eccentricities: Benny sprays insecticide in his armpits and sprinkles little gold flakes in his coffee; Sasha is a closet kleptomaniac who displays all of her trophies on a large table in her small New York City apartment. I didn’t like these people in the beginning. I was embarrassed for them, uncomfortable reading about their painful, dirty little secrets. I read on, however, finding myself strangely compelled to know more about these people, who weren’t really bad people, just strange, as we all are strange once we scratch below the surface of our lives. As readers, we continue on to meet Benny’s young son, his ex-wife, Sasha’s college friends, her uncle, her crazy parents, Benny’s old bandmates, jumping back and forth across several decades in a clever uncoiling of stories that, in the hands of a less-talented writer would be confusing, but in Egan’s confident script, becomes more satisfying with each puzzle piece in place.
Whether your book club is young hipsters doing books and beer, a group of older ladies who have met each month from time out of mind, or an eclectic combination thereof, I heartily recommend reading A Visit from the Goon Squad together – even if it’s not your usual cup of tea (or brew). Goon Squad, for all that parts of it may be like other books or movies with similar structure, is ultimately much more than the sum of its parts.
Shameful secrets or Goons Just Wanna Have Fun? Tell Hobo your opinions on the matter by emailing him at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com. Easter’s gone for another year, but search for Little Bunny Fu-fu or the Goony-goony bird in Hobo’s archives, at his blog, http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com.
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