Book Club Guide

A Visit from the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan · 2010 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Time as the goon — what it takes, what it leaves
Music and what happens to it as the industry changes and the people age
Connection and its loss — the network of people who knew each other once

About this book

Music executive Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha are at the centre of a set of stories spanning decades and shifting perspectives, formal registers and even one chapter written as a PowerPoint presentation. Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel asks what time does to people, to music and to the stories we tell about both.

Published in 2010, A Visit from the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Egan described it as a set of pieces that could be read in any order, though they are arranged so that reading straight through creates a different experience.

Discussion questions

The novel is formally inventive — one chapter is a PowerPoint presentation. What does Egan achieve with this variety — and does each formal choice serve the content or sometimes feel like a stunt?
Bennie and Sasha are at the centre but many chapters barely feature them. What is Egan saying through this eccentric structure — about where significance actually lies in a group of lives?
Music is central — the novel tracks the industry from punk to a near-future streaming world. What is Egan saying about what music is for and what happens to it over time?
The PowerPoint chapter is the most discussed section. What does it achieve through visual form that prose cannot — and how does it relate to the novel's central argument about time?
A Visit from the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer Prize. What does it do that earns this — and is its formal experimentation something that matters for the story it's telling?