Slow Build

Pim van Tol (author of a DTM guest post) has presented me several books over the years.  I always love to get books! His first gift was sensational:  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I'm now overdue to re-read.

Last week in Rotterdam Pim handed me A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011. The prose is terrific, I was hooked right away.

So often with modern fiction, I wonder, "Why am I reading about the invented colorful lives of modern rich urban whites with dysfunctional parents?"  One of the reasons I read so much crime fiction is because I find guns and puzzles not just more entertaining, but less pretentious. 

Goon Squad was immediately compelling but I was worried about its possible snobbishness until the last third of the book, where the author gathers the threads and ups the stakes.  The final chapter is one of the best pieces of science fiction I've ever read. 

There's quite a lot about music and the music industry. I'm not a rock music insider but it all scans as plausible. In fact I learned a few things I should have known before...

An easy call:  A Visit From the Goon Squad will be an incredibly influential book.

05/16/2012

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