Visit From the Goon Squad

Visit From the Goon Squad (2010) is a work of fiction by American author Jennifer Egan. It won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Most of the stories in A Visit from the Goon Squad concern the associates and friends of a successful music executive and aging punk rocker named Bennie Salazar. It traces a large cast of mostly self-destructive characters as they grow older and fate sends them in directions they did not intend to go. The book shifts back and forth in time, moving from the late sixties to the present day and into the near future. Many of the stories take place in or around New York City, although some are set in California, Italy and Africa.

novel won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The Pulitzer Prize Board noted that the novel was an "inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed". In commenting on her Pulitzer, NPR critic Jonathan Bastian noted that "Egan is the one of the most recent and successful examples of a trend that has been steadily seeping into the world of contemporary literature." The unusual format of the novel, taking place across multiple platforms, has led some critics to label the novel "post-post modern". Many critics were impressed by some of Egan's experiments with structure, such as a section formatted like a PowerPoint presentation.

Salon Book Award (Fiction, 2010)
The Tournament of Books, winner (2011)
PEN/Faulkner Award, finalist (2011)
Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Best Books (2010)
New York Times Best Books of the Year (2010)
Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year (2010)
New York Times Notable Book of the Year (Fiction & Poetry, 2010)
ALA Notable Book (2011)
Los Angeles Times Book Prize, finalist (Fiction, 2010)