A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan was published in 2010 by Anchor Books, in Canada by Random House. The book met with near fanatical critical acclaim and following its publication, it won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It is an extraordinary book. The novel follows the lives of two main characters and a group of friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, flashing from their youth to their middle age and back again several times. The story isn’t told entirely from the point of view of these two central characters, as you might expect; instead, it reveals those characters’ personal lives only in part through their own stories. Egan gently exposes their innermost by placing the point of view with secondary characters -- a friend, an old boss, a daughter, a son. It’s a creative and engaging way of developing those two main characters, without focussing too intensely on them. I’ve never read anything quite like it before. And it fits the old writers’ adage remarkably well: don’t tell the reader what the characters are thinking, show them.

The two main characters are Sasha and Bennie. Sasha is a psychologically troubled woman who works for Bennie, a record exec and former punk who played bass in a band in the 1970s. Because the book jumps around in their lives -- from the early days of Bennie playing in The Flaming Dildos, to Sasha being a mother of two -- their stories are slowly unravelled in what must have been an extremely complex writing project. Each chapter is in effect a complete story and each contributes to the bigger picture of Bennie and Sasha and their concentric social circles.

A Visit From the Goon Squad is decidedly non-linear and it’s also non-traditional in the sense that it doesn’t follow the typical novel format from cover to cover. One chapter is an article written by a character (Bennie’s wife’s brother) while serving a sentence in jail for aggravated assault and attempted rape. Another is a series of “Powerpoint” slides, composed by Sasha’s daughter about her family. In every way this is a unique book. But the best thing about it is not its critical acclaim, the fact that it won a Pulitzer, or its quirky approach -- what makes it so great is that it is an extremely accessible and readable book. Because the chapters more or less stand alone, it makes for really enjoyable reading -- you can read one or two chapters without feeling like you have to get to the next bit. At the same time, it’s not a book you put down and move on to another -- the stories all contribute to the big picture and leave you wanting to learn more and to see how it all fits together.

The pages fly by as you meet characters and hear their stories, learn about their troubles and triumphs. It might be set in the music scene and it does explore concepts of changing technology and the evolving music industry, but the story is really about people, about aging and about how life doesn’t always go as planned. Each of its characters experiences life changes that were unexpected, unplanned. And in a lesser novel, these might come across as contrived or forced, but in this book every event is believable, intense and real. Again, I can’t say enough how I think this book is truly a work of superior writing skills. From cover to cover, it is a book that plays with your emotions and takes you on an epic literary ride. A Visit From the Goon Squad is one of the best new novels I’ve read in quite awhile.