{"id":3863,"date":"2011-01-18T17:30:32","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T22:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/?p=3863"},"modified":"2011-01-18T17:30:32","modified_gmt":"2011-01-18T22:30:32","slug":"book-review-a-visit-from-the-goon-squad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/18\/book-review-a-visit-from-the-goon-squad\/","title":{"rendered":"book review: a visit from the goon squad"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\"A<\/a>A Visit from the Goon Squad<\/a> by Jennifer Egan<\/a><\/p>\n

I gave this four out of five stars over at goodreads, but largely because I think the overhype of this book on a whole bunch of end-of-year-best-of lists increased my expectations to a (perhaps unrealistically) very high degree. But it was still a great read. A meditation on time, aging, the follies of both our youth and old age, on our ability to reinvent ourselves, sometimes over and over again. Told through a series of short stories, each in a different voice (including one powerpoint presentation), each focused on a different character, jumping as far back as the 1970s and as far forward as 2020-something, but all inextricably linked and culminating in a complete circle of interconnected lives. Really quite beautifully woven together. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan I gave this four out of five stars over at goodreads, but largely because I think the overhype of this book on a whole bunch of end-of-year-best-of lists increased my expectations to a (perhaps unrealistically) very high degree. But it was still a great read. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-3863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZBi-10j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3864,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions\/3864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}