A Visit from the Goon Squad

I was not expecting this to be a collection of linked short stories, because everyone keeps calling this a novel, but it's really a bunch of short stories. Each chapter feels like you're back at the beginning, with all the attendant confusion. I think this had to do with the voice, although maybe I'm just a lazy reader – didn't every story have the same voice, in spite of very different time and geography, even the first person ones? So it was very difficult to get situated at the start of every chapter.

I thought the PowerPoint chapter was effective and quite well done as an extension of the idea of pauses in music – the bulletpoints and spatial arrangement of text and empty space as ways of enforcing pauses in storytelling. Or is that stretching it too far? (It was also immensely pleasing to get through such a big chunk of the book so quickly!!)

I was relieved that the book wasn't as much about music as I was expecting – or did I just miss it? If it was there and I missed it without noticing, that's good, right? That is, bad for me but good for the book.

The final chapter pulled it all together nicely, perhaps too much so; the concert being held at the site of the towers (right?) was a bit heavy-handed. (I always feel like I can't appreciate the 9/11 stuff because I'm Canadian and it's not that I want to appreciate it but sometimes I want to roll my eyes but I can't.) The chapter portrayed a convincing version of the near future to a certain extent – not so much the handset-speak but the handsets themselves, the climate change (a wee bit extreme for 10-ish years from now), the latest baby boom (especially with all the TWINS), and the way people communicate.

Overall, as a novel, 3 stars; as a set of connected short stories a la Alice Munro and others I should probably know but can't name off the top of my head, 4 stars. So I'm feeling generous today.