A Visit from the Goon Squad

The writing is compelling, some of the most oddly haunting fiction I've read this year.
Andrew Neather
Best Books of the Year, Evening Standard

Something quite remarkable. Keith Miller
Books of the Year 2011, The Telegraph

Inventive and hugely entertaining. David Nicholls
The Guardia: Books of the year 2011

Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad revived memories of the days, decades ago, when American fiction seemed so much more vital and innovative than our own. It is unusual in structure, presenting a number of stories, most of them about people in the music business, which seem to be freestanding but prove to have surprising connections with each other, and the style effortlessly hits its targets again and again. David Lodge
The Guardia: Books of the year 2011

This dazzlingly clever novel set in the American music world is a must read: irresistible as fiction of the highest quality.
The Sunday Times

If you're going to read one new novel this summer, it should be this...Constantly funny, moving, surprising - always fast and accurate. As soon as you've finished it, you want to read it again, understanding more.
Evening Standard

...a hilarious melancholy, enrapturing, unnerving, and piercingly beautiful mosaic of a novel... Donna Seaman
Booklist, Starred Review

[T]his powerful novel chronicles how and why we change, even as the song stays the same. Starred Review
Publisher's Weekly

Another ambitious change of pace from talented and visionary Egan, who reinvents the novel for the 21st century while affirming its historic values.
Starred Review
Kirkus Review

...an exhilarating, big-hearted, three-headed beast of a story...We see ourselves in all of Egan’s characters because their stories of heartbreak and redemption seem so real they could be our own. Need to Read
Marie Claire

A novel that’s a globe-trotting, decade-leaping romp about music-industry people with fashionable foibles.
Lisa Shea
Elle Magazine

Don’t be put off if what you know about rock begins and ends with the Rolling Stones. Jennifer Egan’s novel is irresistible on its own terms as fiction of the highest quality.
Sunday Times

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a work of imaginative energy and charm, and it deserves to win Egan many converts this side of the Atlantic.
The Telegraph

Centered on denizens of the music industry, Egan's tale spans decades, shifts styles and engrosses from start to finish.
People Full Review

New York City saga.
The Evening Standard

Readers with a passion for experimental fiction and innovative prose will surely revel in the time-hopping, nonlinear narrative of Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad. Jeannie Tucker
Library Journal Full Review

An inventive novel...experimental fiction and innovative prose.
Library Journal Full Review

A new genre-creating writing talent.
Stylist Full Review

These are some of the most pressing questions we face, and it's hard to think of another author who engages with them as entertainingly as Jennifer Egan.
Books Quarterly

This is a difficult book to summarise, but a delight to read, gradually distilling a medley out of its polyphonic, sometimes deliberately cacophonous voices.
The Guardian

Dizzying heights...a novel of interconnecting stories that is as emotionally accurate as it is architecturally adventurous.


The Independent

She has pinned the mass and literary market in one hit.
The Times Full Review

Thought-provoking and entertaining... distinctive and often moving... profound and enduring. John Freeman
Boston Globe

Egan constructs the novel with great skill and greater empathy.
Village Voice

Wildly inventive and lovable.
O, The Oprah Magazine

Jennifer Egan’s slamming multi-generational San Francisco saga, A Visit from the Goon Squad, pogoes from the romantic, Mohawked youth of the 70s to the present-day hell of selling out. Hot Type
Vanity Fair

A many-faceted epic... With Egan you're in the hands of a master.
Salon.com

Better Than Freedom<br /> Slate writers and editors share their favorite books of the year.
Intricately crafted, wildly imaginative. Timothy Noah, senior writer
Slate Full Review

[A] monstrous critical success.
Kirkus Reviews, 2010 Best Books

[Jennifer Egan] is one of the most talented writers today, and A Visit from the Goon Squad is her best book. Catheleen Schine
The New York Review of Books