I should not have liked A Visit from the Good Squad because everyone else under the sun does and, really, what is the likelihood that I’d like it as much as everyone said I would?
But I did like it because "A Visit from the Goon Squad" picks up characters (and points of view) like a lint roller picks up hair, dust, and loose threads. It’s almost like the novel itself becomes its own force of gravity, sucking in more and more people and voices, and the bigger it gets the harder it sucks. The novel starts with two characters, Bennie Salazar, a music producer, and his assistant, Sasha and spins out from there. All the characters are loosely tied to one another, and because the novel moves across time and distance so deftly, you end up with what feels like an enormous mural depicting a whole culture, a whole world. In less capable hands, this novel could have been an undisciplined mess; in Egan’s it is a masterpiece.
