I’ve always found background characters interesting: in books, in movies. As a storyline follows the core characters, I’ll often wonder what it would be like to jump into the life and mind of some extra in the background. And that’s exactly what Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad lets you do.
This novel is, in reality, a collection of thirteen interlinked stories spiraling out in tenuous and tight connection to aging punk rocker and music mogul Bennie and his assistant Sasha. Jumping from head to head, the reader journeys across time and space: to Naples, to Africa, to the 70s punk scene, to the modern era. We see our heroes age out of their revolutionary spirits; we slip into the past of characters who appear as obstacles to those we thought we identified and sympathized with most strongly.
Egan has crafted, with her motley crew, the very definition of unlikeable protagonists. More flawed than flawed, these characters seem, for the most part, to bring pain or discomfort into one another’s lives. But the sheer complexity of their oh-so human connections had my heart going out to them. They are not cruel but rather flailing; they are not malicious but rather self-destructive. It’s a keen lesson in empathy and one that Egan guides the reader through deftly and oh-so-enjoyably.