Jennifer Egan - a visit from the goon squad

I put off reading this book for almost a year, due to a series of misconceptions I had formed about it. First, the cover of the paperback I ordered from Amazon is, in my opinion, poorly chosen - the graphic looks like a montage of photos taken at a performance of a children's entertainment group, which is neither appealing nor indicative of content (yes, yes, I know, never judge a book by its cover - but we all do, a little bit, don't we?). Second, the title - goon squad? It sounds like a book about old-time gangsters arriving at someone's door to rough them up a little - not my 'thang', as it were. Of course, having read the book I now get the title and appreciate it. Finally, I had formed an impression, somewhere along the way, that Egan's tour de force belonged alongside popular modern-day books such as Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story - books that are thematically linked by their dystopian outlook on life in the near future. I do like the occasional dystopian novel - l Iove Margaret Atwood's futuristic take, for example, in many of her books, from The Handmaid's Tale to Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. But I get a bit tired of dire futuristic outlooks when they are paired with a cynical and ostensibly humorous narrator's voice that is really a weak pastiche of John Kennedy Toole's dark wit. Often the result is a dismal portrayal of a future just ten or twenty years hence in which nobody cares any longer about things we now care deeply about - in which it is in fact fundamentally uncool to care deeply about anything (hipsterdom on steroids?), but which we are for some reason supposed to find amusing. I had understood that Egan was a Shteyngart-esque writer, and this assumption, combined with the reference to goons, put me off in spite of the fact that a number of people had recommended her to me, and in spite of the knowledge that this book has won so many prestigious book awards (notably the 2011 Pulitzer and the (US) National Book Critics Circle Award ).

In fact, there are no goons in this book, not in the original sense of the word anyway. Instead time itself is referred to by one of the characters as a goon - coming as it does to roughen us up, to steal away our youth. And only one chapter - the last - takes place in the future.

After reading just a few pages of this book, I turned to Bibliohubby and told him I might have found a new female writer I adored, who - if the book continued as it started - I might end up listing in my top ten. This is significant because I realised recently, after reading a number of blogs on the topic and having a think, that I have a slight tendency to prefer male writers to female - not because of gender, of course, or not consciously anyway. The apparent preference is disconcerting. It worries me.

But more on that some other day.

The rest of the book did not unfold quite as I had expected. Indeed, to call this a 'novel' is to reinvent the term, something which critics and readers alike appear to have done with surprising ease, welcoming Egan's story-based form as an innovative and inventive post-postmodern way of telling a bigger story. Egan herself, though admitting that the format of the book makes it hard to classify, has said that she leans towards considering it a novel. Were one to categorise the book along more traditional lines, however, one would have to conclude that it is a book of independent short stories featuring characters who are all loosely interconnected. We meet some of the characters repeatedly throughout the book, sometimes through stories focused on their lives, sometimes through stories in which they play only a peripheral part. The stories hop around in time, from the 1960s to the near future, creating a vivid portrayal of the characters' lives as they unfold over a lifetime. We see them both young and energetic and old and rough - once the goon of time has ravaged them. The result is a vaguely cohesive tale centring largely on Bennie Salazar, a music producer, and his assistant Sasha. The cast of characters making up the meat of the book are all linked to Bennie and/or Sacha at some point in their lives, and most have something to do with the music industry and its profound changes over time.

In addition to the unusual structure of the novel - if one wants to call it that - Egan plays with form and structure within the stories themselves. The story / chapter that has received the most publicity is the one which is told entirely in the form of a Powerpoint presentation - something that the young narrator-protagonist of that story calls a 'slide journal', and which is indicative of the future Egan sees unfolding - one in which technology has taken over to such an extent that Powerpoint is writing, and where words like 'friend' and 'identity' have ceased to have any real world meaning outside of technology. I knew this chapter was coming and I was as curious about it as I was resistant to it. But in fact, in the context, it works beautifully. It's surprising how much can be told about character and meaning and story in just a few words on a Powerpoint slide.

In many of the other stories, Egan will pause in her narration to suddenly take us forward 40 odd years in a character's life and tell us where they ended up, or what happened to them - all within the space of a paragraph. Similarly we are sometimes thrown backwards to learn of a character's early, formative years. In this way time is constantly interrupted and warped, disturbing the usual linear coherence we expect from storytelling. One reviewer has pointed out that the originality here - because of course many authors use flashbacks and flash-forwards - stems from the absence of a narrative present. We can't pinpoint what the 'present' is, here, so even the use of terms such as 'flashback' and 'flash-forward' seems inappropriate.

One is left, after finishing the book, with a strong attachment to some of the characters, and with a sense of sadness about the inevitable changes brought about by the ravages of time. It is a book that will stay with me, I think.

My personal preference is usually for a novel that has some continuity of story. I rarely finish books of short stories, although I know the form is difficult to master and can be even more powerful than longer form writing.  As much as I admire Egan for her obvious electrifying ability to write in a variety of ways about such a cacophony of characters, I think I would have enjoyed this more if it had been written as a more traditional novel. Call me a stick-in-the-mud. One of the complications of the structure Egan has chosen is that one never knows which character will feature in the next story, or which character we will have the pleasure of revisiting later in the book. Some of the stories focused on characters I would otherwise have thought of as 'minor', and I was disappointed, then, at the end, to find that other characters who I would have considered to be significant in the overall plot never re-occurred. For example (spoiler alert!), whatever happened to Alice, the girl Bennie so loved who Scotty ended up marrying? And they were never tipped to be major characters, but the point of time was so powerful that I really wanted to know whether those two delinquent musicians to whom Scotty handed Bennie's card on the pier ever followed up and called Bennie, whether the dude ended up being the great musician his girlfriend claimed he was, whether they made it big. And I was sad to hear Bennie, late in life, talk about Sasha as having 'sticky fingers', something for which he ended up having to fire her. I never anticipated that ending to their friendship, which at times seemed like so much more than mere friendship, and it was strange having that unlikely fact handed to me as an aside in an unrelated conversation that took place years after the event.

However, I do understand that Egan's challenge was to write about time and its effect on people and their lives. This was very successfully achieved through the structure she chose, and would have been difficult to pull off had goon squad been written in customary novel-form.

Overall assessment: 4.5 out of 5. As much as I enjoyed a visit from the goon squad, I am left with a keen desire to know whether that strong voice I loved at the beginning of the book is able to be sustained through a proper novel - goon squad didn't provide me with the answer. I want to read Egan's earlier books, three of which are actual novels, to find out whether my suspicion that she belongs in my basket of favourites is justified.

Pros: Wonderful writing, intriguing characters, thoughtful themes.

Cons: As discussed above, I simply prefer a novel to a collection of short stories, and the fact that this was written in such an unusual way meant that I felt I missed out on some material that might otherwise have been included. Also, to be truly cynical, there is a touch of self-conscious try-hardedness (not a word!) here - it's a good way to win a prize, isn't it? To sit down and show you can write successfully in many different voices, to show off one's skills  by convincingly writing from both male and female perspectives, as a youth as well as a senior, in traditional formats as well as in the form of a Powerpoint presentation. I don't like feeling played, and there is a little bit of that going on here, even though Egan pulls this all off effortlessly.

And - we're back!

Woozy with jetlag, I am back in the driver's seat after our travels. Our trip was successful and joyous, though exhausting (traveling widely with a hyper-active 16 month old whilst 7 months pregnant is not generally advisable, especially when said travel involves 6 flights, a train and a snowstorm over a relatively short space of time). Some of the happiest moments for me (other than seeing friends and family, of course) involved bookshops. Chapters in Toronto; Barnes &Noble in Denver; Boulder Bookstore in Boulder; Vashon Bookstore on Vashon Island in Seattle; and the glorious Powell's Books in Portland.

So what did I buy?

Two Curious George books for my son, whose favourite TV show is Curious George, in an attempt to woo him towards reading about the little monkey instead;

The Paper Bag Princess, for our soon-to-be-born daughter;

A beautiful book called Wherever You Are, My Love Will Find You - for both children (thanks to my sister-in-law for finding this).

And for me:

• a gorgeous autographed copy of A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers;
• the imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman, which I am reading now and loving;
• The Paris Wife by Paula McLain  - this book about Hemingway's love affair with his first wife has been recommended to me by a trusted friend;
• A Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka - had never heard of it but it was prominently displayed and looks intriguing;
• Home by Toni Morrison - I love her writing and this new volume is already receiving accolades;
• Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan - I read this on the trip, review to follow soon;
• Portlandia, a Visitor's Guide - to share with Bibliohubby, because we love the show and love to laugh together, and to commemorate our first visit to Portland, which was inspired by the show;
• The Red Notebook by Paul Auster - a tiny volume of true stories by my favourite author (not pictured)
• a hard copy of The Housekeeper and the Professor - after e-reading it I wanted a copy for my shelf;
• a hard copy of Tinkers by Paul Harding - ditto (not pictured);
• a new edition of State of Wonder by Ann Patchett - it's so beautiful, with rough pages, I had to get it;
• a new edition of The Disappeared by Kim Echlin - ditto, and I promise to give my old copy away to a friend who spent several months in Cambodia.

I may also have a shipment due from Powell's Books... maybe. The shipping costs were so reasonable!

All in all, I think I did well. I have come back feeling refreshed and inspired, having discovered new writers and done more reading than I thought I would fit in on our hectic travels. But I am still looking for a new e-reader, which I thought I would purchase on this trip, but didn't after I discovered the prices in North America are really no different to Australia.

And given the proliferation of e-books and e-reading, which is so much more practical when one travels, hampered by luggage and weight restrictions, I'm curious: do you buy books when you're traveling, eschewing practicality as I have clearly done, or do you stick to e-books?

SUNDAY SALON - The Merit (and Appeal) of Chain Bookstores

I know many of you check in from North America, so this may surprise you: in Australia, we have recently suffered a loss. The major brand of large chain bookstores on our shores has definitively closed.

Of course we still have our smaller independent bookstores, and a local chain called Dymocks, which boasts a limited number of larger stores that host an onsite cafe. But gone are the days when a visit to the mall as a matter of course included a lengthy browse in a big bookshop, or when the natural meeting place for friends and family alike was the cafe in Borders.

Don't get me wrong, I have always been a proponent of indie bookstores. I make a deliberate effort to head out to my favourite neighbourhood stores to purchase certain choice books, and to ensure that my book money is spread evenly across platforms - so that any given month might include Amazon purchases of both hard copy and e-books, big chain store purchases (once upon a time) and smaller independent and used-book store purchases.

I have favourite independent bookstores all over Sydney, which is my current hometown: Gleebooks in the inner West, Berkelouw and Ariel books on Oxford Street, Banjobooks in Epping, Oscar & Friends booksellers in both Surry Hills and Double Bay, Lesley McKay's in Woollahra. Then of course there are fabulous used bookstores, including another branch of Gleebooks, Ampersand on Oxford, Gertrude and Alice in Bondi and my beloved T's bookshop in Randwick. I will make special trips, depending on where I am, to seek out these shops and browse in them, taking the time for a coffee where that is a possibility. I seek out unique bookstores when I am traveling too, interstate or overseas, and love nothing more than to find a resident cat in a New York city store, or a complimentary plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies in a Seattle neighbourhood.

But. But but but. Forgive me, hardcore indie fans, but there is still something special about walking into one of those large North American style stores, veritable cathedrals of books that they are.

As you know, we are traveling at the moment, and on our first day in Toronto, when my mum asked me what I wanted to do, my first thought was "Chapters! Or Indigo!" - naming the large bookstores dotted all around the city, making a trip to these a priority.

And when I walked in that first evening I had time for a proper browse, snatching a few delightful moments on my own as Bibliohubby babysat little Ignatius, I breathed in deep. Ah, that intoxicating smell of paper and coffee and commercialism - pathetic, I know, but it almost made me tear up. Places like this make me feel safe, I suppose, as though the continued existence of large bookstores means that books themselves will also continue to exist.

Three massive floors of books! In such beautifully wrought surrounds. In a store that stays open until 10 or 11 at night, every night, with a bustling inhouse cafe, with proper espresso coffee and plush seats to sink into and read once you've found your pile of 'maybe' books.

Of course, I am not delusional. I can see that these stores are capitalising on suckers like me, and that they make additional coin by delectably displaying other items book fiends might desire. I bought a pair of socks marketed as 'Reading Socks' a few years back from a large Toronto city store, and felt peculiarly bonded to them even though - really - they were just normal woolly socks (a 'marketers' dream', Bibliohubby calls me, and he's not wrong).

This trip has had me pause repeatedly at the table devoted in every Chapters store to gorgeous journals. And, allow me to digress here: I am a ridiculous addict of journals. I have far, far more than I will ever need. I have a whole shelf in my study at home devoted to journals and notebooks collected over the years - some are ornate, with carved covers and fancy bound spines, others are simple and practical, like my ever-growing collection of Moleskines in a variety of colours and sizes. I am never without a journal and a pen in my handbag, just as I am never without a book.

And yet! And yet I find it hard to bypass this table that is so beautifully set out with journals without wanting to buy each and every one of them. Rationally, I understand that all of them contain the same thing: lined paper. But this does not dilute my desire. There is now a series of gorgeous leather-bound journals that simply say 'Journal' on the cover, and they come in the most satisfying shades - lemon, mauve, mint, turquoise, rose. I want them all! Even now, as I write this, I find myself regretting that I didn't succumb to my weakness and purchase one of these beauties. And then there are the more ornate notebooks, etched with gold thread (or similar), imprinted with the words of ancient texts, with covers carved out of rare wood. And then still others, with more ordinary covers but calling out to be filled. Journals entitled variously: "Insomnia - a dedicated place to record the thoughts racing in your head when you wake up in the middle of the night" (I could use that, I think to myself excitedly!); "Listmania - keep a list of things you will do in the future" (Essential! methinks); "A line a day - one line each day for the next five years" (So simple! I think, knowing that this would solve the diarist's problem of consistency; one line a day is surely feasible).

Of course I could easily keep track of any of these things in my existing journals. The covers of these new ones do not alter the plain blank pages within or the potential content that might one day fill those pages. But still. I want these journals, I want them all.

Anyway - back to books. I find different things in big bookstores than I do in smaller ones. Indie bookstores are my source for new, as-yet relatively unknown debut novels, gems tucked away to be discovered by the likes of me - sometimes even a goldmine of signed editions from an author reading. In used bookstores I have come across first or second editions. In larger stores I often find new editions of books I have read before, these days with those lovely rough cut pages and velvety covers. It's awful, but I am such a collector that if I really love a book, I have no moral problem buying a new copy of it with a different cover. And as I increase my intake of e-books, I find that I now have the luxury, if I read a book electronically and adore it, of heading out with the specific task of finding the most attractive hard copy of it to sit on my shelves.

Does the existence of these large bookstores really so endanger the existence of independent booksellers that we need to decide in favour of one or the other? Are books selling so poorly these days that it is impossible in one city for both to exist? I know the closure of Borders in Australia was a far more complicated issue, involving alleged mis-management and so on and so forth, but what I am talking about is broader. When I was studying for my MA it was considered grievous for any English postgraduate student to enter into one of these large bookshops. Support independents! went the slogan, and I did. But that didn't stop me from also occasionally slinking into a larger store when there was snow on the ground and Chapters had a nice fire going and coffee brewing...

I suppose I am hopeful, really, that bookshops of all sizes and kinds might survive. Yes, I know that even Chapters and Indigo are suffering. I know that I am probably dreaming. But while they still exist, should we not savour the joys offered by all of these unusual places, that offer books but also a place to read, a place to meet, a place to drink coffee and to talk about literature? A bookshop in a city, for me, is like an oasis: a well of peace in the urban sprawl. I guess this is my church we're talking about. And I don't think we should feel guilt for entering into a church of our denomination, even if it is owned by a corporate giant rather than a ma-and-pa enterprise.

Where do you shop for books? Do you think there is a place for large chain bookstores as well as smaller, charismatic indie bookshops?

Yoko Ogawa - The Housekeeper and the Professor

* I preface this review by apologising for my recent radio-silence. We are on the road traveling in North America this month, during which time it has been and will no doubt continue to be difficult to get enough consistent access to any computer for me to be able to write and post regularly. I will do what I can, but be assured that regular transmission will resume in the week starting 25 February. *

This is a lovely quiet little book that will sneak up on you, so that your emotional attachment by the end comes as a surprise. At least that's how I experienced it.

Yoko Ogawa is apparently quite prolific. As someone who has little experience reading Japanese fiction (save for some Murakami), I'm very pleased that this particular book has earned Ogawa such international acclaim, so that I was able to hear of it and read it. I first heard about it when it was one of the featured books on my favourite (Australian) book show, ABC's The First Tuesday Book Club. That was several years ago and I was interested in the differing opinions it had sparked: Jennifer Byrne loved it, whilst Marieke Hardy (for whom I have always had a soft spot) likened it to young adult fiction that was also trying to 'trick' her into liking math. Recently I came across another mention of the book on a trawl through Goodreads, and decided on a whim to download it. I was vindicated when, earlier today in Canada, I came across a delightful hard copy edition with an accolade on the front cover by one of my favourite authors, Paul Auster.

The plot is simple. A housekeeper is hired for a new position looking after an elderly math professor with an unusual ailment. After a car accident many years earlier his short-term memory is now restricted to an 80 minute cycle, which reboots automatically as if on a precise timer. The professor has already gone through at least nine previous housekeepers, none of them up to the job of caring for a man who ceases to remember them repeatedly throughout the day.

This housekeeper, however (whose name we never learn), is entranced by the professor and his gentle ways, and develops an unlikely friendship with him. He greets her each day by asking for her birth date or her shoe size, numbers being the one constant that allow him still to organise new information into recognisable patterns. The housekeeper does not mind the repetition and finds his frequent vocalisation of mathematical problems diverting and even enlightening. When the professor finds out the housekeeper has a young son who sits at home by himself after school, waiting for his mother to return from work, he insists that the housekeeper bring her son to his house each day instead. The professor's delight in the boy, and the boy's equivalent respect and admiration for the professor, deepen the friendship between these three characters.

The professor dubs the boy 'Root' because the top of his head is flat like the square root sign - a head 'oddly suited to supporting a hand.' Between math lessons and a shared love of baseball this unlikely pair form a tight bond that is all the more touching given the absence in the boy's life of any other father figure. As time passes it becomes clear that the professor will leave a lasting impression on both the housekeeper and her son, even though, as the professor's sister-in-law poignantly says to the housekeeper towards the end of the book, 'my brother-in-law can never remember you, but he can never forget me.'

The book is small and poetic, in an understated, elegant way. It is reflective of the manners of the Japanese (though I do not profess to be an expert of any kind). Feelings are never directly expressed, so that even when the housekeeper at one stage loses her position through a misunderstanding, she does not stand up for herself in the vocal way that we might expect of a modern-day heroin. Polite ways and means of expression govern the interactions of the characters and this means the book reads like a gently bubbling brook, no cliffhangers or waterfalls or major plot interruptions, just gentle simmering humanity. But it is, at the same time, moving and sad, and memorable.

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5 stars.

Pros / Favourite passage(s):  The translator here has done a beautiful job, the writing even as read in English is evocative and quite lovely. Some examples below.

'And yet, the room was filled by a kind of stillness. Not simply an absence of noise, but an accumulation of layers of silence, untouched by fallen hair or mold, silence that the Professor left behind as he wandered through the numbers, silence like a clear lake hidden in the depths of the forest.'

'As I mopped the office floor, my mind churning with worries about Root, I realised how much I needed this eternal truth that the Professor had described. I needed the sense that this invisible world was somehow propping up the visible one, that this one, true line extended indefinitely, without width or area, confidently piercing through the shadows. Somehow, this line would help me find peace.'

Cons: Whilst I certainly don't feel as Marieke did that this book was trying to trick me into liking math, I will confess that I have never been a math aficionado and, although I can appreciate the objective beauty of mathematics, I did occasionally feel while I was reading this that it was enough already, with the endless math. Especially when it was clearly intended to be broken right down so that even dummies would get it but I still couldn't figure it out. But this was a small thing, really, in the context of the story.