Play Book Tag discussion
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A Visit from the Goon Squad
December 2018: Geek Reads
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A Visit From the Goon Squad
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I started this and lost interest and moved on. I’ve always planned on going back to try again, but maybe not!
I thought this was a well-written book, but it left me a bit depressed. Usually I'm happy when I work my way through a difficult book, but I ended up wishing I hadn't read this one.
I read this book many years ago. It was an unusual and sometimes disturbing book, but parts of it stayed with me for all these years. With my memory issues, that's saying something. I don't think the characters were very likable, but there was just enough to keep me interested. There were flashes of insight and social commentary mixed in with weirdness. I remember a funny bit about babies rating music, and having a controlling influence on sales. It was an exaggeration of a trend that's been going on since marketers catered to teenage babyboomers (because there were so many of us). I sometimes got the feeling that the book was brilliant in a way I couldn't totally grasp, but it was too unpleasant to dig deeper.


Although not tagged a geek read, I think A Visit From the Good Squad qualifies on the basis of its style and structure. A Visit From the Good Squad is an unusual novel which relies on metafiction techniques and old fashioned story telling to accoplish its goal of telling stories of heartbreak and redemption.
Stylelistically the novel moves from satire to power point to explore the lives of the books characters as the world around them changes. Here their pasts are revealed along with the inner lives of other characters whose lives intersect with theirs.
I gave it three stars because it was difficult to follow as each chapter focused on a different character. It didn't offer much to go on in identifying who the character is. Based on the information the character reveals through their pov is mostly gained by making inferences from clues left by the author. Not my cup of tea.