2022 book 49

 Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad

I hadn’t read this since it first came out, and all I remembered was that a) I loved it and b) one chapter is narrated by a young girl entirely in PowerPoint. And both those things are still true! I mean, dang if I didn’t just read this all in one sitting! Anyway, we decided to read this for book club this month, since a sequel/companion is coming out in April, and it was really nice to revisit. If you somehow haven’t read this book (it won the Pulitzer), it’s a novel told in stories about an interconnected group of people in New York, primarily people in the music/cultural scene, flashing back to the characters' misspent youths (the 70s punk scene! Seedy Italian hostels!) and flashing forward to the near future . . . but this book was written in 2010 so the near future was actually . . . last year . . . insert sweat drop grimace emoji here. I will say I am glad we as a society have not started using the abbreviated text-speak Egan predicted. But the PowerPoint chapter was still very effective. A.