Timeline

• Feb 23, 2026: started reading.
• Mar 05, 2026: finished reading.

Review

It’s really a shame that a group of dedicated internet weirdos have conspired to mutilate the meaning of the word “goon” in the years since this book was first published. Though this fact does echo the book’s central preoccupation with time and change enough to merit a morbid chuckle.

Time’s a goon. — p127

(Little did she know.)

This novel won the Pulitzer back in 2011, and it’s easy to see why. It’s very well executed on a technical level. The themes are clear but deftly executed and subtle when they need to be.

I’ve also seen this book described as “post-modern,” but that feels like a misleading categorization. It’s true that it doesn’t have much in the way of plot. Its story is a tangle of interconnected chords that eventually loop back — or don’t — on themselves. There are an overwhelming number of characters and minute details. There’s a chapter with tennis and another in the form of an annotated celebrity article. Both of which give an unsubtle nod to the preoccupations and style of David Foster Wallace, a postmodernist who loomed large in the minds of his contemporaries. Hell, there’s even an entire chapter in the format of a power point slide deck made by a 12 year old girl. These are all very standard ingredients for a book that wants to be seen as rejecting traditional or mainstream ideas of what a novel can or should be.

But despite the form Egan is ultimately a humanist and a romantic in how she crafts her stories. Her deft use of multiple voices and the creative application of whatever form feels most aligned with a given character flows from her intuition about them and is not merely an intellectual or aesthetic exercise. Form follows function and that, although the form was very much in flux as she shifted from character to character, felt oddly traditional as far as novels go.

Ultimately, the book shows its age in a few spots. The final chapter gets speculative about the future and manages to get it partially right, but it’s specific enough it feels a bit clunky in the parts where her guesses don’t land. At the end of the day, though, it is a masterclass in characterization. Egan inhabits the voice of her characters so well at times, she’ll use an adjective or a noun and you’ll think, well yeah, that’s exactly the type of word this character would reach for.

An enjoyable read despite the ravages of time.