The day that time caught up with the rock stars: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

You would be forgiven, if judging from the title alone, for coming to the erroneous conclusion that Jennifer Egan’s much-acclaimed novel is a crime thriller, sprawling with mobsters, violence and shameless immorality. And yet, although Egan attributes part of her inspiration to HBO’s The Sopranos, the ‘goon squad’ is in fact a metaphor for that passive, yet omnipresent, entity: time. As one character remarks, ‘Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?’ A Visit from the Goon Squad is concerned with what happens when time catches up with those who are most eager to keep it at bay and cling to the fantasy of eternal youth; it is about memory in its fragmented entirety; and about human relationships on a cosmic scale. 

The evolution of the US music industry provides a fitting backdrop to Egan’s episodic narrative. Time, or tempo, so intrinsic in music, is reflected by the disjointed form which, in turn, reflects the disjointed framework of life in the States. This is neither a novel nor a collection of short stories, but something in between, as Egan flits between the vibrant assortment of characters, time and space. We tear through settings, from New York to Naples via the African bush, leapfrogging from the grungy 1970s to the techno-savvy near future. Characters who are minor in one chapter come to the forefront of the next, their lives intricately interwoven into the fabric of US society.

The book opens with the confessions of Sasha, the kleptomaniac PA, who is hired by the music producer, Bennie, who was once an untalented young bass player in the quaintly named punk band, the Flaming Dildos, mentored by the coke-snorting, teenage-girl-seducing Lou who ends up IV-fed and dying in hospital, whilst Bennie now extravagantly sprinkles gold flakes into his coffee in an attempt to bring back his former libido. The effect is a disorientating cacophony of voices that demands the reader’s full attention, or even – if you can muster up the will to sit through the melancholy and drab portrait of America for a second time – a subsequent reading. Since all characters are touched on so lightly, it is difficult to empathise with any of them; Egan takes this literary convention and turns it on its head: time becomes the chief protagonist in this book, a character in its own entity that takes no prisoners.

If Egan can be criticised for the lack of a gripping plot, then she makes up for it with a rich array of ideas and literary pizzazz. Goon Squad becomes more fragmented and more formally experimental as it progresses. The penultimate chapter is written entirely as the PowerPoint slide diary of Sasha’s teenage daughter, and I became increasingly lost, I admit, in the last chapter where the English language decomposes into extreme text-speak: ‘if thr r children, thr mst b a fUtr, rt?’ Yet this alienating effect, whilst not gratifying to read (be not fooled, this is no beach read), underpins the essence of the book: technology lends a hand to the erosion of communication and, therefore, the breakdown of human relationships.

For those who require an antidote to this bleak outlook, however, look no further than the interconnectedness that pervades the book’s format and content: the impacts these characters have upon each other are a direct result of their inherent connectedness, not mere coincidence. And so it seems that, although at times we come dangerously close to isolating ourselves from our own kin, humanity, with all its interlinking and colliding relationships, is far too deeply etched into our very being ever to be annihilated. A Visit from the Goon Squad is the type of book that, after a first reading, leaves you unmoved but after a second or third, leaves you sort of jelly-legged.

One Day by David Nicholls - Book review

This book is brilliant - I can't recommend it enough. I think everyone can relate to it on some level. Defy the critics. Go on, if you haven't read it yet, start today! This review is also published on creaturesofculture.com - check them out...



One Day by David Nicholls

You’ve seen it in the hands of commuters and all over the shelves of WH Smiths and Tesco; you’ve heard that the film is coming out this summer starring Anne Hathaway (Heaven forbid) and Jim Sturgess; and, unless you’ve read it yourself, you’re probably wondering what all the fuss is about. Well, make haste; get yourself down to those Tescos shelves, befriend a commuter – however you do it, get your hands on a copy and only then will you truly understand why One Day is such a wonderful book.  

The opening concept is admittedly nothing out of the ordinary: two students at Edinburgh University have a post-finals fling, wake up together, bleary-eyed and boozey, engage in some semi-awkward pillow-talk and, after spending the day together, go their separate ways. It is 15^th July 1988, St Swithin's Day, a date charged with significance and to which the title alludes. One Day revisits Emma and Dexter on this day, every year for the next two decades. It traces their increasingly divergent lives, occasionally in parallel but frequently perforated by intense instants of crossover. It dawns on them, as it does us, that they are happiest when they are together; nay, they are in love. Yet they remain just friends, albeit ‘best’ friends in some ways. David Nicholls succeeds in encapsulating the quintessence of young adulthood, first love and heartbreak whilst spinning a tangled web of a platonic friendship that continually teeters towards romance.

Working-class northerner Emma moves to London and becomes a waitress in a bad Mexican restaurant, whilst secretly nurturing a desire to become a writer. Yet she ends up teaching English and moving in with her bland boyfriend, Ian, a failing stand-up comedian, whose choicer puns include pasta ‘penne for your thoughts’. Emma is immediately likeable, in spite of her flaws: ‘self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most’.

Middle-class Dexter, on the other hand, does not lack self-confidence. After a couple of gap years, he pursues an initially successful career as a laddish television presenter and becomes addicted to sex (his girlfriends are ‘like funfair goldfish; no point giving them names, they never last that long’), drugs and his own pathetic C-list celebrity. Although it seems at first, blinkered, glance that he has it all, he becomes increasingly hedonistic, ostracising Emma so entirely that we feel that the emerging chasm between them may never close: ‘Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead?’

Cynics are quick to point out the ‘limiting’ structure of the novel, arguing that returning to the same day each year means that some of the most important events in their life are never recounted. But would you really want to read every intricate detail of these two characters’ lives for twenty years? Doubtful. And it is precisely because the novel spans for such a vast amount of time that it is so affecting: you really do put down the book with the irrational feeling that Em and Dex are as well known to you as your closest friends. Besides, not only can we use our own capable imaginations to fill in these gaps, but also the event that is the ‘most important’ in this book is arguably the relationship between Emma and Dexter in its twenty-year entirety, and this is certainly recounted.

For all its comic gloss, One Day personifies the gritty reality of loneliness and unmasks the savagery of fate; the tragic abyss between youthful ambition and the compromises that we come to endure. Yet despite Nicholls’ refusal to provide easy consolations – at points this book is unbearably sad – his witty prose is uplifting and resonates above the desolation. This is Nicholls at his best; a warm-hearted, engaging and totally brilliant book that you will fall in love with.