Usually, I mistrust hype. But if you get the chance over this Bank Holiday Weekend and the next, grab a copy of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad, which has just won the Pullitzer and would doubtless sweep the Grammies if it was eligible. I have just started it and it was immediately beguiling. It’s a book of contradictions: self-regarding then mysterious; constrained and then epic; foul and at a turn inspiring. I can’t wait to get out into the sun and read it at leisure.
It’s much too early to fathom my own response to the book. So here is Cathleen Schine, a devotee of Egan, writing hers in the New York Review of Books last November:
‘Jennifer Egan’s new novel is a moving humanistic saga, an enormous nineteenth-century-style epic brilliantly disguised as ironic postmodern pastiche.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in