Linked Out: Why it's difficult to read a collection of "linked stories"

Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad," now three chapters in, remains entertaining but challenging - each chapter more or less an independent story with links among the characters: i.e., the first chapter focuses on Sasha and references her boss, a music producer, (why do I keep forgetting his name?), second is about the producer going to check on one of his groups, Sasha plays a minor role in this, he thinks about among other things his youth in a punk band in SF, and the third chapter is in fact about him in his youth, but mostly from the POV of one of the girls who hung around with the band back in h.s. days. The challenge isn't so much the shifts in POV or time but in the great proliferation of characters. When we read a collection of stories, we fall into a certain mind set or rhythm in which we re-gear or reorient our mind and expectations with each new story: we start fresh, each character will be new, the situation will be new and it will form an arc and resolve, at least to some degree. When we read a novel, we expect the characters to grow, change, interact with one another, over the course of a long arc of events that will cohere in some linear or logical manner. The linked stories, the fuel that has propelled a thousand MFA writing programs, create a hybrid expectation, and, while the linked stories may be an effective device for a writer, they are challenging for a reader - especially when, as in this case, they're not linked chronologically but thematically.