A Visit from the Goon Squad | B-

A title like A Visit from the Goon Squad and a picture of a broken guitar on the front cover can lead you to many assumptions about the content of a book. You can try as much as you'd like to guess what the book is about, but you'll probably fail. This is a book of many complexities.

Jennifer Egan, the author of The Invisible Circus, Look at Me and The Keep, tells an interesting tale with A Visit from the Goon Squad (June 2010), a book which even includes a 75-page PowerPoint presentation. Egan uses an unconventional storytelling approach because she doesn't just mention the people in her main characters' past lives — she takes you back to those past events mentioned as well and tells the story from their points of view. It can be a bit confusing as she switches time and place so often, but Egan does it tactfully and tastefully. Learning about these people is just as interesting as the main characters' stories.

The story starts off with a bang, as she begins the tale with Sasha Blake, a kleptomaniac, sitting on her therapist's couch talking about a particular incident where she steals the wallet of a girl in a bathroom while on a date. She talks about how stealing made her feel and how she quickly grew tired of her date. The story then goes into the life of Sasha's boss, record exec Bennie Salazar. At this point the story switches to Bennie's point of view as he tells of his growing affection for Sasha and how his life has lost its spark. Then the book takes a trip back in time and tells of Bennie's teen years when he was in a band with a group of his friends and first met Lou Kline, Bennie's mentor and the final "main" character. The book continues going into various characters' lives before finally ending with Alex, Sasha's date.

The bookis set up in layers and each chapter peels back another layer to the main characters' lives to give a better understanding of them. But by the time you get to the seventh chapter, you're left questioning, "Why was I originally reading this?" and "Who is the main character of this book again?" It takes you through so many personalities that you find yourself forgetting who the alleged main characters are or what the book was essentially about. The book could easily be mistaken as a collection of short stories since not one chapter is told from the same person's point of view or from the same time period.

One thing can be said about Egan's composition of this book, though: Each chapter leaves you craving more. You crave to know more about these sad characters and how their lives unfolded. Egan leaves it all up to the imagination of the readers.

If you like a simple read, this might not be the book for you. But if you like books that delve into the minds of the characters, or if you're looking for a way to escape your own troubles, this will make a good read. If you do pick this book up, be prepared to read about life, music, and everything that comes in between.