A Visit from the Goon Squad

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An impulsive pickup from our local library. I'd heard good things, even though it took me a while to get around to reading it. (It won the Pulitzer for fiction. Back in 2011.) I almost certainly have nothing new to say about it.

It seems to be, more or less, an interlinked collection of short stories, told from multiple points of view, jumping around in time. (For example: The final chapter is set in the future, where Manhattan is protected from flooding by massive dikes, trees bloom in January, and "adjustments" to Earth's orbit (!) have sunset occurring at 4:23.)

Minor characters in one chapter can become the main characters in the next. One chapter is a collection of PowerPoint slides; you can view the color version here.

I was initially put off: Oh, it's gonna be one of those books where unpleasant, not particularly interesting people obsess over their psychological quirks. But I was eventually taken in, because the author makes them interesting. There's tragedy and comedy. Maybe (I never thought I'd write something like this) the funniest story about an attempted rape I've ever read.


Last Modified 2024-01-17 9:51 AM EDT