Knopf
SUNDAY, SEPT. 27
The Erie Reader Book Club will be reading and discussing A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan in conjunction with the Back to (Old) School issue of the Reader.
Each September, the Reader usually features back to school as the theme, since most are back into the swing of class schedules, homework, and packing lunches each day. But this year, we decided to put a twist on our usual Back to School issue and instead create the Back to (Old) School issue, a month that will be focused on analog-related content (think anything pre-Internet).
In choosing our book to fit our theme, we landed on A Visit from the Goon Squad, which centers around a bygone era of a time before everything was at our fingertips. The story is told in a series of 13 interrelated stories with a wide cast of characters, all of whom circle the lives of aging record exec and former punk rocker Bennie Salazar and Sasha, a troubled young woman he employs.
Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts within the pages, we as readers are given a view into their lives, past and present as well as public and secret, spanning across time from the 1970s to present and into their near future, and across space from locales as varied as New York to Kenya, San Francisco to Naples, and many places in between.
Egan expertly uses an array of styles and tones throughout, creating a book about the interaction of time and music, about survival, and about how we as people are caught between the choice of self-destruction and self-redemption, often reaching for both as time continues on.
1 p.m. // Werner Books and Coffee, 3608 Liberty St. // Free to join, cost of book not included // For more info: wernerbooks.com