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A Visit From the Goon Squad

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Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page,  A Visit from the Goon Squad  is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.

Extreme End-of-Decade Love for A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD!!

Grateful and Thrilled that GOON SQUAD has somehow remained in the conversation after ten years: ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY :  Best Book of Decade Time Magazine :  10 Best Books of Decade ELLE :  15 Books that Defined the 2010s Philadelphia Inquirer :  20 Best Books of the Decade VOX :  19 Best Books of Decade Literary Hub :  The Best 20 Novels of the Decade

Minneapolis Star-Tribune  and  St-Louis Post Dispatch, by  Ellen Akins, 4/1/22

“Each [chapter] has its own language, its own tropes and terms, which Egan somehow manages to use and skewer at the same time, while maintaining the mystery that makes each person unique and worth knowing.”

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National Post (Canada), 1/10/12

“When finally I read the first pages, I was transfixed. For the next 36 hours I found all other activities bothersome because they took me away from this marvellous book.”

Pop Matters , 2/21/12

“I don’t like this so called high brow versus commercial dichotomy because I feel it isolates both camps in an area that I’m guessing no one particularly wants to be in.”

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Seattle Met , 1/26/12

“I just love not being attached to a machine…Maybe I lose something in terms of velocity, but I think I gain it in terms of freedom.”

BookTalk (UK) 1/10/12

“It feels like I am seizing upon details that suggest to me a life I don’t necessarily know, but is out there and has integrity. I could pursue it if I wanted to, but my goal is to keep my eye on this larger vision.”

A Visit from the Goon Squad

By jennifer egan.

‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’ by Jennifer Egan follows a multi-style narration where some are done in the first person, some in the second, and others in the third person. The book consists of 13 chapters and each tells a complete, independent story with a different protagonist of its own.

Article written by Victor Onuorah

Degree in Journalism from University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

In the book’s opening plot, Bennie Salazar, a former punk rockstar turn record producer, and Sasha Grady Blake, his assistant appear to be the two characters to which tenths of other later characters are connected. The book spans fifty years – from the 1970s to the 2020s – and the stories are not nearly as chronologically arranged as one might expect , but that all adds to the overall excitement and creativity in the book. Here’s all you need to know about the plot of Jennifer Egan’s ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad .’

‘Spoiler Free’ Summary of A Visit from the Goon Squad

As Sasha Grady sits with her therapist, dissecting the many ways to overcome her kleptomania, she recounts all the times she had shamelessly taken from her family, friends, and strangers.

Sasha is many things, but poor is not one of them. But this is a mental health issue. So it seems. But she is not the only one with such issues. So did her boss of 12 years. And all their other equally passionate punk rock music fanatic friends who go way back to the 70s. Scotty, Rhea, Jocelyn, Drew, Rob… all of them. 

Like Sasha, the time has hit them so hard into submission and resignation. But for Sasha, yes, she might have spent her youth living on the edge. She might have brought disgrace to her family and friends with her shameless pilferings. But this time, all she wants is one last late chance to get her life together and do one honorable thing for a change. If not for her interest, then for the interest of her children unborn.

Full Summary of A Visit from the Goon Squad

Warning – This article contains important details and spoilers

Part A (Chapters 1 – 6)

Sasha books a date with her therapist with the hope of finding a permanent solution for her kleptomania, the reason she would lose her job as Bennie’s assistant. During her session, she recalls two stealing incidents; the first was a lady’s purse at an eatery which she returned after being cornered. The second was done on Alex, her date, at her house.

In the next chapter, Bennie, a forty-something years old music producer, and his son Christopher attend an indoor music performance by his band, and everyone – including his now assistant Sasha – attends. As the beat plays, the normally frigid Bennie is feeling some sort of arousal, but a series of humiliating thoughts snap him out of it as he drives home wife his son – dropping Sasha at her place.

We are taken aback to the late 70s, where two friends – Rhea and Jocelyn – have heavily invested interest in punk rock. While Rhea, a very fanatic punk rocker, has self-esteem issues and feels less beautiful because of her facial dots, Jocelyn, a beautiful but naive underage girl, is sharing a carnal knowledge with rock music icon, Lou – and would eventually elope with him. But before that happens, the girls get him to attend their friend Bennie’s show with his rookie band, ‘The Flaming Dildos,’ an event that would see Lou take Bennie under his wing resulting in Bennie’s later success in the industry.

Chapter four opens with Lou out on vacation on the safari with his two children – a boy named Rolph and a girl named Charlie, his girlfriend Mindy, and two other entourages. On the trip, Mindy clashes with Lou as she can’t seem to get along with his children, and when a chance show of bravery proves Albert (one of the entourages) a bigger man after he guns down a lion about to attack them, Mindy, who feels charmed by the event, secretly makes out with him (Albert). Lou’s enraged but later wins his girl back (and based on the flashforward in this chapter) – even weds her and have two children together before they divorce. The foreseeable future isn’t as great either for Lou’s children – as Rolph will die first from a disconnect from his father, and later from suicide. Charlie will go to law school and later, out of wedlock, have a son she will secretly call Rolph.

The next chapter sets in a few decades forward with Lou now old and on his dying bed. As the women stand over him and catch up, a clear picture is painted of how much has happened since they last saw each other; Rhea is married with kids, and Jocelyn has gone back to live with her mother and enrolled for a degree in UCLA at age 43. Jocelyn still holds resentment toward Lou for wasting an important part of her life and wishes him death, but Rhea seems to interfere to calm the tension. They layer help Lou outside to a pool area, and – on Lou’s request – the three of them hold hands in one final act of unity and forgiveness.

The final chapter of part A takes us back into Scotty’s life after he and Bennie went their separate ways around chapter two. Scotty is living like a failure, withdrawn from social life, and finds new joy in fishing, but he still loves music and occasionally plays. One day Scotty pays a visit to his old friend Bennie but is left devastated by how successful Bennie has become. As they talk, there is a sort of bad blood between them as back in the day, Scotty won the battle for Alice and married her (although they would later divorcé catastrophically), to Bennie’s despair. Scotty then leaves with Bennie’s business card and a faint hope of contacting him in the future about a possible music project.

Part B (Chapters 7 – 13)

Part B opens with Bernie moving to Crandale with his PR wife Stephanie, but both can’t seem to fit into the bigoted neighborhood because Bennie is Latino and Stephanie is a tattooed woman. Stephanie’s older brother and ex-convict Jules ( he was a journalist imprisoned for attempting rape on his source) – who also stays with them – accompany her to Bosco’s, a once punk music icon now sick, bloated, and dying, but wants one last concert where he pushes himself and dies poetically on the stage. Jules thinks it’s a good idea, has an interest, and wants to write about it – even though Stephanie feels otherwise. Returning home that night, Stephanie accidentally finds her tennis friend Katty’s bobby pin on the floor as Bennie goes to use the bathroom – confirming her suspicions he’d been cheating on her.

Chapter two of part B brings the story of a former famous PR consultant, Dolly Peale, who has this one job of selling a genocidal General. Personally, Dolly needs this work to set her career back on track after her last event left several celebrities going home with massive burns. She travels with her daughter Lulu and actress Kitty – who is supposed to only pose for the camera with the General but goes off spotlighting him about the genocide event. Kitty is taken away by the General’s entourage as Dolly flees with her daughter. She would never return to her PR job again and would instead travel to a remote neighborhood seeking a fresh start as a burger store owner. 

Stephanie’s brother Jules Jones narrates the next chapter in the form of a magazine article he wrote from jail. Jules details the interview he did on Kitty and how he got a little personal (comparing her with his ex-fiancé) – leading to the part where he attempted rape on her. Kitty, however, wrote him apologizing for what transpired between them – an act which further made the actress more popular. 

Rob tells the next story – taking us back to the days of him, Sasha, and Drew studying at New York University. Rob is gay and has mental health issues, and had attempted suicide in the past. While the three of them are close-knot friends, Sasha seems to confide in Rob but secretly loves Drew. After catching the Conduit concert one day, while Sasha meets and talks (for the first time) with Bennie, her friends Rob and Drew stroll down to East River, where Rob leaks Sasha’s decadent past lifestyle in Naples. Drew is distraught and goes solo-swimming in the river, and as Rob trails behind him, he is unlucky and drowns. 

Sasha’s Uncle Ted Holland narrates the next chapter and talks about how he’s being paid ( by Sasha’s stepfather ) to track Sasha down in Naples. Ted – who is a man of art – is distracted from his main quest and begins visiting museums and viewing fascinating artworks. By chance, he stumbles into Sasha in the street and convinces her to meet up and talk. When this happens, both talk about their problems and soon go to the club, where Sasha steals his wallet and flees. Ted can trace her home and get her to return his wallet. As they sit together and look out the window – enjoying the warming blaze from the sun, we are taken into the future where Sasha is married and have two kids Uncle Ted will visit her, and both will share similar scenarios again.

The next chapter takes us several decades into the future, where Sasha’s daughter Alison tells the story of her family in a PowerPoint slide. She talks about the general mood in her family and how her busy doctor father, Drew, doesn’t seem to get along well with her autistic little brother Lincoln (whom she loves so much). And after he makes Lincoln cry so hard one day, Alison advises him to try working on the great pauses of rock music – as he (Lincoln) loves that. Alison has a mental health issue of her own, and something has pessimistic revelations about her family.

The concluding chapter returns us to Alex but in the future, and this time he and Dolly’s daughter Lulu (now a grownup) work with Bennie to sell Scotty Hausman’s upcoming concert via social media. Scotty had resigned from his janitorial job and returned to making music. On the day, Scotty has a fit because of the large crowd, but Lulu walks onto the stage with him as he plays. The concert is a hit, and they will be remembered for many years to come. Bennie and Alex take a walk; Bennie talks about Sasha and how he misses her. Alex can’t quite recall the details about her but seems to remember when they coincidentally walk into the building where Sasha had lived. But not anymore. As some new girl named Taylor comes out of the door playing with her keys.

What is Egan’s ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ’ about?

‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ’ by Jennifer Egan is a book that captures the brutal reality of time flashing before people’s eyes, and they sometimes have to watch their dreams and aspirations disappear and unaccomplished.

How long does it take to reach ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ’ by Jennifer Egan?

It only takes a few hours to start and finish ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ,’ however, you might be required to spend extra hours revisiting previous pages and come back to current ones to be up to speed with all the characters and their role in the book. 

Is ‘ Goon Squad ’ a hard book to read?

Across its use of non-linear story chronology and multiple narrative styles, ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad ’ can be tagged as a relatively harder book to read than the average book.

Who are the foundational characters in ‘ A Visit from the Goon Squad’ ?

Record producer Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha Grady Blake are the two foundational characters from whom all the other fleet of characters are connected. 

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About Victor Onuorah

Victor is as much a prolific writer as he is an avid reader. With a degree in Journalism, he goes around scouring literary storehouses and archives; picking up, dusting the dirt off, and leaving clean even the most crooked pieces of literature all with the skill of analysis.

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A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – review

T he title of Jennifer Egan's new novel may make it sound more like an episode of Scooby-Doo than an exceptional rendering of contemporary America, but don't be fooled. The book received rave reviews when it was published in the US last year, and for good reason; it has since been named a finalist for several prestigious American prizes. Egan has said that the novel was inspired by two sources: Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu , and HBO's The Sopranos . That shouldn't make sense but it does: Goon Squad is a book about memory and kinship, time and narrative, continuity and disconnection, in which relationships shift and recombine kaleidoscopically. It is neither a novel nor a collection of short stories, but something in between: a series of chapters featuring interlocking characters at different points in their lives, whose individual voices combine to a create a symphonic work that uses its interconnected form to explore ideas about human interconnectedness. This is a difficult book to summarise, but a delight to read, gradually distilling a medley out of its polyphonic, sometimes deliberately cacophonous voices.

The "goon squad" of the title is not itself a reference to The Sopranos : there are no mobsters here. It is one character's name for time: "Time's a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?" Everyone in the book is pushed around by time, circumstance and, occasionally, the ones they love, as Egan reveals with great elegance and economy the wobbly arcs of her characters' lives, their painful pasts and future disappointments. Characters who are marginal in one chapter become the focus of the next; the narrative alternates not only between first-person and third-person accounts, but – perhaps just because she can – Egan throws in a virtuosic second-person story as well, in which a suicidal young man tells his tale to a colloquial "you". She also shifts dramatically across times and places: punk teenagers in 1970s San Francisco become disillusioned adults in the suburbs of 1990s New York; their children grow up in an imagined, slightly dystopic future in the California desert, or attend a legendary concert at "The Footprint", where the Twin Towers used to be, sometime in the 2020s.

The stories circle magnetically around a few characters who recur a bit more frequently than others, and broadly around the American music scene: Lou, a coke-snorting, teenage-girl-seducing music producer in the 1970s, becomes the mentor of an untalented young bass player, Bennie, who becomes a music producer himself, who hires a young woman, Sasha, who has a problem with kleptomania, who sleeps with a young man, Alex, who much later ends up hired by Bennie to engineer the comeback of Bennie's high-school friend Scott, who went off the rails as an adult and ended up one day in Bennie's office with a fish he'd caught in the East River, where Sasha's best friend and boyfriend in college had once gone for an early morning swim with tragic consequences. Bennie's wife works for a publicist named Dolly whose daughter, Lulu, will end up working with Alex; Bennie's wife's brother is a journalist who is arrested for the attempted rape of an actress named Kitty Jackson who has her own fall from grace and is later hired by Dolly to enable the public rehabilitation of a genocidal Latin American dictator.

Each chapter has its own distinct voice and mood, modulating from satire to farce, from melancholy to tragedy. I've never found a description of attempted rape funny before, but when Jules Jones writes (from prison) his account of his assault on Kitty Jackson during an interview, it becomes an uproarious parody of David Foster Wallace that owes more than a little to Nabokov as well, as Jules describes finding himself with "one hand covering Kitty's mouth and doing its best to anchor her rather spirited head, the other fumbling with my zipper, which I'm having some trouble depressing, possibly because of the writhing motions of my subject beneath me." Kitty sprays him with Mace, stabs him in the leg with a Swiss army knife, and runs away. "I think I'd have to call that the end of our lunch," Jules remarks.

If it comes as a surprise that an attempted rape can be hilarious, it is an even greater surprise that a PowerPoint presentation can be moving. 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 Alison, whose brother is obsessed with pauses in rock songs. Those pauses, like the spaces between PowerPoint slides, become a metaphor for the gaps between what we mean and what we say, or the apparently unbridgeable distance between family members. The trick feels appropriate in a book preoccupied throughout by the effects of technology on our lives and culture, from the consequences for music of the digital revolution (as Bennie observes, digital production has transformed not only the industry of music but its sound as well) to the way in which technology is transforming our language. Egan's Orwellian final chapter imagines a future in which English has decomposed into radical text-speak: "if thr r children, thr mst b a fUtr, rt?"

Egan has said that the organising principle of A Visit from the Goon Squad is discontinuity; this may be true, but the reason the book works so well is because of the continuities she has also created: her atomised people collide, scatter and recombine in patterns that are less chaotic than they appear. Egan's characters, and the America they inhabit, are winding entropically down. It's a kind of meditation on the butterfly effect, in which recurrence becomes the measure of the chaos of our lives, the novel reimagined as a series of chain reactions. But Egan's vision of history and time is also decidedly, and perhaps reassuringly, cyclical: the impacts these characters have upon each other are engineered not by coincidence but by connectedness itself, as the people we bump against and bang into become the story of our lives.

Sarah Churchwell is a senior lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia

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A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer egan, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Time and Memory

A Visit from the Goon Squad serves as an in depth exploration of the passage of time, the effects of aging on individual lives, and the longing for the past through memory. The novel’s title even speaks directly to the theme of time. Bosco , the former guitarist of The Conduits, who has become fat, alcoholic, and suicidal, states, “Time’s a goon, right?” Traditionally, a goon was an individual who inflicts fear and violence on…

Identity, Authenticity, and Meaning

The issue of identity is a prominent theme in A Visit from the Goon Squad , as Egan explores the extent to which identity is inherent and the ways in which it is assumed. The novel’s characters struggle to find meaning and authenticity in their lives, and they use different methods to discover, create, and escape their identities. The novel’s two primary characters, Sasha and Bennie , are two examples of characters that face challenges…

Connection, Disconnection, and Technology

The theme of Connection and Disconnection is finely balanced in Egan’s novel. Structurally, the novel highlights the way in which the characters’ lives are woven together. Characters from one story emerge in later stories as background characters, and background characters in some stories take center stage at other points in the novel. For example, the story “Ask Me if I Care” is narrated by Rhea and includes Jocelyn as a side character. Later in the…

Fame, Art, and Popular Culture

A Visit from the Goon Squad offers a strong critique of popular culture. Egan accomplishes this criticism primarily through her exploration of the music industry, but film, photography, and journalism are also investigated in her novel. Egan draws attention to the way in which trends come and go, and the effects of these cultural shifts. What is popular in one moment—for example, punk rock—is replaced by another trend soon after—such as overproduced pop music or…

Ruin and Redemption

The theme of ruin and redemption is present throughout Egan’s novel. This theme fits nicely alongside the novel’s other themes, as the characters find themselves crushed by time, by their self-centered and isolating ways of living, and by shifts in American culture. Throughout the novel, each of the major characters finds him- or herself at a low point. Sasha ’s story shows her slipping deeper into ruin as the result of her stealing, her isolation…

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Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each ot...

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Olivia Wilde Confirmed to Direct TV Adaptation of ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’ from A24

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Olivia Wilde has officially lined up her first post-“Don’t Worry Darling” directing gig.

Wilde has signed on to direct the TV adaptation of Jennifer Egan’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “ A Visit from the Goon Squad ” and its 2022 follow-up “The Candy House” for A24. Wilde will also executive produce along with Jennifer Fox.

“A Visit from the Goon Squad” is a set of 13 interconnected stories all linking back to fictional record company executive Bennie Salazar and his assistant, Sasha. “The Candy House” continues their shared story.

The A24 adaptation marks Wilde’s first major TV directing gig. Wilde made her directorial debut on the 2019 film “Booksmart” and won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature.

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Wilde is also set to direct an untitled Marvel film around the Spider-Woman character for Sony and Pascal Pictures and is developing a Christmas buddy comedy at Universal.

A24 most recently swept the 2023 Oscars with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and made a big splash with Netflix’s critically acclaimed “Beef” and set a buzzy Cannes debut for “The Idol.”

A first look at the company’s upcoming TV series “The Sympathizer” was also unveiled during the Warner Bros. Discovery investor meeting. The HBO show is an adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name and is helmed by Korean auteur Park Chan-wook.  Park and Don McKellar co-showrun and executive produce the series, which stars Robert Downey Jr. in multiple roles. Hoa Xuande, Fred Nguyen Khan, Toan Le, Ky Duyen, and Sandra Oh also lead the series.

Per the official HBO logline, “The Sympathizer” is an espionage thriller and cross-culture satire about the struggles of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the final days of the Vietnam War and his resulting exile in the United States.

“Overall, it’s a seven-episode series, and it’s set in 1975, immediately after the Vietnam War,” the “Decision to Leave” director Park told IndieWire on the 2023 Golden Globes red carpet. “The story covers Vietnamese refugees who have migrated to L.A. and the stories surrounding that environment. Because of the context, casting revolves around having a lot of diversity, especially a heavy presence of Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans.”

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