Set a few years in the past, told by Scotty. 'X's and O's' – Scotty delivers a fish to Bennie at his Sow's Ear Records office, where they have a tense conversation.Set about a decade in the past, told by Jocelyn.

'You (Plural)' – Jocelyn and Rhea visit Lou on his death bed.Set in 1973, the story is told in the third person, mostly from Mindy's perspective and details a lion attack that happens on the safari. 'Safari' – Lou takes his children, Rolph and Charlene, and his new girlfriend Mindy, on a hunting safari in Kenya.Set in the early 1980s in San Francisco, told by Rhea – a friend of the band. 'Ask Me If I Care' – In Bennie and Scotty's teenage years, their band, The Flaming Dildos, scores a show at a punk club, thanks to a music producer named Lou, who is dating their friend Jocelyn.Set in the recent past, told in the third person from Bennie's perspective. 'The Gold Cure' – Bennie, Sasha, and Bennie's son Christopher attend a performance of one of bands Bennie works with, Stop/Go, who now have 4 members instead of 3.Set in the present day, told in the third person from Sasha's perspective. She later steals a note from Alex's wallet. She returns the wallet to its owner, who does not turn Sasha in. 'Found Objects' – Sasha, a kleptomaniac, steals a woman's wallet while on a date with Alex.She has also said that she considers the book to be neither a story collection nor a novel. In an interview with 's Laura Miller, Egan said she leaned toward calling the book a novel rather than a short story collection. Many were originally published as short stories in magazines such as the New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. A Visit from the Goon Squad has 13 chapters, which can be read as individual stories and which do not focus on any single central character or narrative arc. The novel received mostly positive reviews from critics and later appeared in many lists of the best fiction works of the 2010s.īecause of its unusual narrative structure, some critics have characterized the book as a novel and others as a collection of linked short stories. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, the book also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2010. Many of the stories take place in and around New York City, although other settings include San Francisco, Italy, and Kenya. The stories shift back and forth in time from the 1970s to the present and into the near future.

The book centers on the mostly self-destructive characters of different ages who, as they grow older, are sent in unforeseen, and sometimes unusual, directions by life. The book is a set of thirteen interrelated stories with a large set of characters all connected to Bennie Salazar, a record company executive, and his assistant, Sasha.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of fiction by American author Jennifer Egan.

A visit from the goon squad sparknotes