A Visit from the Goon Squad is a prismatic journey that documents the effects of relationships, reminiscences, narrative, and time. The author — Jennifer Egan — has indicated that the book was influenced by Marcel Proust’s A la Recherché du Temps Perdu (usually translated as either In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past) and The Sopranos (I’ve never watched the show, so I can’t comment on any plausible connection).

The book is, in part, a study of how the characters journey from ‘A’ to ‘B’ through narrative, through time, and through connection to others and their experiences. It is even structured in to an ‘A’ section and a ‘B’ section, rather than a Part I and a Part II.

The ‘goon’ in the title refers to time. The passage of time has a brutal effect on the bodies and minds of the characters. And the story itself is at the mercy of the goon-squad of time: the narrative is thrust from the present into the past and/or future, and back, through decay to redemption (and sometimes destruction).

The novel is filled with the stories of its many characters, all with some connection to Bennie, the music Producer, or his kleptomaniac assistant, Sasha. The writing is inventive: Ms. Egan used first person, second person, and third person — and there is even an emotionally moving chapter in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, which illustrates the novel’s themes of the effects of technology on culture, and our inability to communicate with each other effectively.

The characters were well-depicted: for the most part I was sympathetic to their plight, and there was humor to be found in unusual circumstances.

The book could be categorized as either a novel, or a series of interconnected short-stories, but in the end analysis it doesn’t really matter. A Visit from the Goon Squad is intelligent fiction.

Recommended.