Interconnectedness in Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad

At the start of each summer vacation, I look forward to tackling my list of books to read. One of my favorites this summer was Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, the Pulitzer Prize winner from last year. The book amazed me with its clever intersection of plot lines, incorporation of pop culture, and how our communication is changing rapidly with new technologies. The music and the digital world -- the internet, smartphones, the new texting lingo -- become a driving metaphor for the book and the connections between the characters.

While the first chapter begins with Sasha, a 30-year old young woman living in New York and battling her stealing compulsion, the subsequent chapters move onto another character loosely connected to Sasha. With each chapter we meet a new character who is tied to others throughout the book, although loosely connected. As we meet the various characters in vastly different periods of their lives, we realize how they are all connected and that a minor character in one individual's past can make an important impact in years to come. Similar to surfing the web, the book allows us to delve into paths of inquiry. We might start on one page, follow links that interest us but may stray away from the original thought process. Eventually, we get so far off of the original subject, we have to stop and ask - "how is this all related?" As we trace our thought process, we begin to understand the complexity of our inquiry and the interconnectedness of ideas.

Using the visual-driven digital age as the background of one chapter, Egan creates a chapter of a young girl (Sasha's eventual daughter) who shares her perspective in powerpoint slides. The above link gives a small sampling. She visualizes connections between ideas by graphing them. We know what she is trying to say without her spelling everything out for us. The emotions and tensions she feels in her family life are better conveyed through visuals than words.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a masterfully written novel that captures the enthusiasm and wonder of music and digital age all while delving into the powerful intersections between people and emotions.