I have just finished reading, and really enjoying, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Club. Which is a relief because I didn’t enjoy my last two novels and I was starting to think I never would! I was contemplating chancing my arm on the Pulitzer Prize winner, so avoided reading reviews – I like to come at books with no preconceptions. But I was anxious from from descriptions about it in articles – about the Pulitzer and whether it was better than Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. These focussed on it being a bold novel, a bit experimental and unconventional. A set of thirteen loosely linked stories. With a bit of futuristic stuff at the end. I was deeply suspicious about all of these things, but I’m glad it didn’t put me off.
It is bold and unconventional but not in a boring or difficult way for the reader. That’s what made it different to the novels that have disappointed me lately. It was easy to read and fun and you care about some characters and curious to see what happens to those you don’t much like. I don’t measure books by their size, but I am opposed to length for the sake of it and this is a short novel, with short chapters which suit the story that is told. I read it over a weekend.
It is quite hard to talk too much about it without giving the plot away – which is the the case with most of the reviews you’ll find by googling, which I did after I’d finished – so I’d advise against that!
It is about people and their relationships with each other and the affect they have on each other and on their children and the affect that the decisions they make have on them. The impact of experiences in their childhood and adolescence. And all this is told in fragments back and forth in time and slowly the picture you have of them builds with more details about how they relate to one another emerging. As it does in real life when you meet people and their stories slowly come out – and sometimes they never do. You do eventually get a nearly whole story of Sasha who you meet in the first chapter – but not in a single linear way. And Bennie, the record producer. And you know enough about the others by novel’s end for it all to be very satisfying.
I loved many bits, but in particular Safariand Charlie and Rolphe trying to work out where they fitted into their father’s life, and life in general. Goodby My Love which is set in Naples but harks back to summer holiday in America and captures the essence of a particular sort of marriage. I loved the PowerPoint chapter, Great Rock and Roll Pauses, that captures the intricate relationships between mother, father, brother, sister. I even liked the futuristic bit at the end Pure Language , in part because it is a recognizable future and an optimistic one. I liked the mad characters like La Doll / Dolly and the mad situations. And though some of the people are eccentric, they are all credible and while some events might be improbable, things like Selling the General do happen in real life.
I think it is a very American novel. Everyone is out there trying to make a go of it – going up the greasy pole, and falling down it again. Jennifer Egan has great sympathy for those who are too sensitive for the harsh business of living, of those who fall for the wrong people, who make the wrong decisions, who fall down and then have to scrabble around to get back on their feet, and those, like Scotty, who elect to stay on the fringe. From time to time she tells you directly what is going to happen to a character in the future – leaping forward a few decades. She, and the reviewers, say the novel is about time – the passage of time, continuities, discontinuities. The title is about time – but I’ll leave you to read the explanation in the novel. I like the sense of time, the fragmenting of different periods in people’s lives. This all sounds a bit of a jumble I know, but I think it works just fine. Strip it all away and this is an interesting novel about people who you will remember. It is insightful about the things we do and why. It is not preachy, but overall it is saying have a go, keep at it (life), never give up, be kind to yourself and to your friends. Perhaps I’m overstating it. But that’s what I have taken away from it.
Hereis one of reviews I was talking about, but remember it will give away some things I think best left to discovering in the novel.
There is an iPad app for the book, which I wish I’d known because I’d have given it a go. So if you have an iPad check that out in the App Store, about $16. And it is going to be made into a television series – should be a good one.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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