I didn't know A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction before I read it. Frankly that surprised me. I thought it was a good book but not that good. What do I know? This book had a ton of characters. In thirteen chapters, some of those characters came back and others didn't. One chapter was done entirely in power point and was done from the perspective of Allison, the daughter of Sasha and Drew and brother to Linc. Linc has Autism and they all live in a house out on the edge of a desert. Allison lays out in slide format the differences between her Mom and her Dad. One slide lays out what her parents are most likely to say if she does something. Another slide lays out the details of Linc's obsession with pauses in rock songs. This is a really odd yet revealing way to get to know a family. Benny Salazar is one of the main characters in the story. He is a music producer. Many of the characters are either in the rock and roll industry or the advertising industry. Some stories take place in San Francisco, New York, Arizona, Italy or Kenya. This book is all over the place. The timing of the stories is from the 1970's to the near future. Most of the characters do some extremely wild things in their youth but grow up, settle down, and are more mainstream. Although I can't decide if it is a collection of short stories or a novel, I did enjoy reading it.
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