Reading Order
A Visit from the Goon Squad Reading Order
Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) is the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the music industry — thirteen interconnected stories following Sasha and Bennie Salazar and the people around them from San Francisco punk in the 1970s to a near-future New York of toddler music consumers, ranging across decades and continents, with one chapter narrated entirely in PowerPoint slides. Egan called it a 'novel in stories' — its formal experimentation is inseparable from its subject, which is the way time works on people and the way the music industry represents a particular American story about ambition, success, and decline.
Where to start
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Complete A Visit from the Goon Squad Book List
- 1Buy
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan·2010·The complete standalone novel — thirteen chapters that can be read in any order but reward publication order, the PowerPoint chapter being Chapter 12 and most striking in context. - 2Buy
The Candy House
Jennifer Egan·2022·The companion novel — set in the same world, overlapping characters, a near-future in which people can externalize and share their memories, Egan formally inventive again in a companion volume that works as a standalone or a continuation. - 3Buy
Look at Me
Jennifer Egan·2001·The earlier Egan — Charlotte Swenson in New York City and the culture of image and identity, showing the formal interests and thematic concerns that Goon Squad would develop more fully.
A Visit from the Goon Squad — Frequently Asked Questions
What order should I read A Visit from the Goon Squad in?
A Visit from the Goon Squad was written so that chapters can be read in any order, and several have been published separately as short stories. However, most readers and the author recommend reading in publication order, since the chapters build on each other cumulatively and the PowerPoint chapter (Chapter 12, 'Pure Language,' narrated by Sasha's daughter Alison using slides) lands differently after the twelve chapters that precede it. The final chapter, 'Pure Language,' is set in the near-future and works as an epilogue to the preceding twelve.
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