A Visit from the Memory Squad: Books by Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan is an inventive writer, particularly in her dealings with narrative structure. She also comes up with fascinating characters and immersive settings. Plots can be labyrinthine and there are often twists at the end of her tales. While some of the material can be bleak, she handles it with a light touch. If you're looking for a quality novel without the same-old, same-old, see below.

Manhattan Beach is Egan's most recent and most straightforward novel in the narrative department, but many of her other trademarks are still there. Anna works in the New York Naval Yard during WW II to support her mother and disabled sister. In true Egan fashion, she is haunted by memories of her absent father and the gangster whose house they visited five years earlier, when she was just hitting puberty. Anna and the gangster later run into each other and form a connection. Egan really gets the feel of working-class New York, and the novel packs a real punch.  

Highly-acclaimed A Visit From the Goon Squad takes place in a series of vignettes jumping around from the 1970's to the future. Ben Salazar goes from punk rocker to music executive, while Sasha, his secretary, survives the Naples underworld. Goon Squad also jumps between perspectives, and there are numerous other searchers for characters. This book focuses on the ways and whys of personal change, as well as the persistence of hope.

The Keep is told primarily as a "fictional" creative writing assignment in a prison. Rich Howard needs help renovating a castle in Eastern Europe and his cousin Danny needs to get out of New York. Howard's vision of a hotel without electronic distractions horrifies Danny, along with the idea that Howard might not have forgiven him for his role in a nasty prank pulled when they were teenagers. Using gothic conventions, Egan writes of the way art can redeem the most wasted of lives.

Identity and appearance are the main themes in Look at Me, the story of two Charlottes. Big Charlotte is a high-fashion model hailing from Rockford. During an impulsive trip back to her despised home town, she gets in a car crash. While not disfigured, Big Charlotte is no longer recognizable and her modeling career falters until the Internet makes her even more famous than before. Little Charlotte is the teenage daughter of Big Charlotte's former best friend. She is involved with a mysterious stranger who has come to town about the same time as Big Charlotte, and also is the disciple of her uncle Moose, an ex-Ivy League professor with some peculiar ideas about the Industrial Revolution. Egan also hits her recurring theme of the threats of ubiquitous technology in this typically perceptive tale.

Egan's first novel, The Invisible Circus, concerns Phoebe, who is tracing the final travels of her late, hippie, older sister through Europe. Faith was their father's favorite, and lived to gain his approval by being free-spirited and daring. Phoebe is just the opposite. Her sensual awakening, particularly in Italy, presages the hallucinatory descriptive passages in Egan's later work.  

What's your favorite Jennifer Egan novel? Tell us in the comments.