Literary Fiction · MelancholicLinked stories of people in the music business, from punk-era San Francisco to a near-future New York
A Visit from the Goon Squad
A former punk rocker turned record executive, and the troubled young woman who works for him
Bennie is a former punk rocker who now works as a record executive, and Sasha is the troubled young woman he employs. Around them the novel opens up the pasts and inner lives of many people whose paths cross theirs, in a story of self-destruction and redemption with music running through it. Each chapter changes narrator, voice and decade, from punk-era San Francisco to a near-future New York.
More about this book
Who
Bennie Salazar, a record company executive, and Sasha, his assistant, a former kleptomaniac. Around them is a wide circle of people, most of them in the rock music business.
World
From the 1970s to the present and into the near future, mainly in New York City, with stops in San Francisco, Italy and Kenya.
What makes it different
The book has thirteen chapters, each of which can be read as its own story and focuses on different characters. The narration shifts among first, second and third person, and some chapters take unusual forms, including a magazine article and a PowerPoint slide show. Egan has said she was inspired by Proust's In Search of Lost Time and by The Sopranos.
Feel
A story of self-destruction and redemption with music running through it. It won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and has a sequel, The Candy House (2022).