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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 other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city's demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale.
We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life--divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house--and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang--who thrived and who faltered--and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both--and escape the merciless progress of time--in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers. From the Hardcover edition.
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Subjects
Fiction, Punk rock musicians, Sound recording executives and producers, Older men, Young women, Literature, Short Stories, New York Times bestseller, nyt:trade_fiction_paperback=2011-03-19, Skönlitteratur, Art, Punkrockmusiker, Music, Fictional Works, Friendship, Fiction, psychological, Musicians, fiction, Young women, fiction, New York Times reviewed, Large type booksPlaces
New York, San Francisco, Naples, Africa, New York CityEdition | Availability |
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01
Tiempo Es un Canalla / a Visit from the Goon Squad
2024, Salamandra Black
in Spanish
8419456063 9788419456069
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02
Visit from the Goon Squad
2019, Little, Brown Book Group Limited
in English
1472154959 9781472154958
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03
Shi jian li de chi ren: A visit from the Goon Squad
2012, Shi bao wen hua chu ban qi ye gu fen you xian gong si
in Chinese
- Chu ban
9571355933 9789571355931
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05
Visit from the Goon Squad
2011, Little, Brown Book Group Limited
in English
1849019916 9781849019910
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07
Visit from the Goon Squad
2011, Little, Brown Book Group Limited
in English
1780330286 9781780330280
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08 |
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09
A visit from the Goon Squad
2011, Thorndike/Windsor/Paragon
in English
- Large print ed.
1410441512 9781410441515
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10
Visit from the Goon Squad
2011, Little, Brown Book Group Limited
in English
1849017409 9781849017404
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11
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jun 01, 2011, Constable & Robinson, imusti
paperback
1780330960 9781780330969
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12
Visit from the Goon Squad
2011, Little, Brown Book Group Limited
in English
1780331169 9781780331164
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13 |
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14
A Visit from the Goon Squad
2010, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Electronic resource
in English
0307593622 9780307593627
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15 |
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