A Visit from the Goon Squad - Discussion questions for book groups


  1. A Visit from the Goon Squad is a series of short stories, connected in some way, but not in chronological order. Did this arrangement have any effect on your emotional attachment to the characters?
  2. Even though the stories were written from the perspective of several different characters, do you think there was a main character?
  3. What meaning did you take from the phrase, ‘Time’s a Goon,’ (p.96)?
  4. Is A Visit from the Goon Squad a book of short stories or is it a novel? (If you want to get more in-depth, you might what to discuss what defines a novel)
  5. Why do you think Jennifer Egan wrote an entire chapter/story in PowerPoint? Was it a comment on the character? On technology?
  6. If the book has a theme connecting all the stories to each other what do you think it is? Or is there more than one?
  7. What did you think Jennifer Egan meant by the Proust quotations in the epigraph? Had your view of their meaning changed by the time you finished the book?
  8. Was there a particular story that you found more compelling? A character you felt more connected to?

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