Book Group visits the Goon Squad

Book group - generally agreed that Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad" was a challenge to read, in that it tells a story, but not in sequence and that each chapter is a separate entity and you have to adjust your thinking with every new chapter - different lead characters, different voices and modes, different time settings. TP particularly irked by this difficulty and wonders if Egan just being perverse or if there was a reason - I suggest the reason is on one level simply to keep us more alert and engaged, but also that she is primarily a short-story writer and each of these stands or could stand independently. MR reads a glowing, almost fawning review in the Guardian, and I wonder whether reviewer really loved the book as much as she said: it's one thing to describe everything a novel is or that the author intends it to be and another to actually like the book and enjoy reading it. Some, esp BR, admired the humor. Ultimately, I felt that Egan for some reason is writing a novel about very unlikable characters - but, like all authors, she does like her characters, and she is a nice person who genuinely wants good things to happen to these characters - and thus the dichotomy of this book, they're characters who should be doomed, but they're not, she finds (somewhat) happy endings for them. I was not convinced that she truly knows about the music industry - and M concurs, having heard that she didn't when starting out but did "research" - well, it feels that way, the music characters are pretty much just the stereotypes that any of us could imagine without doing the research, she doesn't really surprise is with rounded and complex people - it's a book for people (like us) who don't know the music business and like to think we do, or could. Several of us (me included) found that most compelling chapter to be the search and rescue mission for Sasha in Naples, and I for one wish it had been a little shorter and ended with Sasha rolling her uncle and stealing his wallet, not with his rescuing her - but this chapter feels genuine, as if these are truly people Egan knows, in contrast with the PR chapter and the celeb-journalism chapter, which are broadly humorous but not very knowledgeable about about the industries under satire. Also liked the NYU/suicide chapter - Egan writes well about adolescents under stress, in other words.