★★★★☆ [amazon_link id=”0307477479″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan[/amazon_link] – Central to the story are time, music, Bennie Salazar and Sasha. Beyond them are pasts that they share between people they’ve known and places they’ve been.  Bennie is an aging record executive and Sasha is his assistant. The story travels back and forth in time, sometimes jumping past, present and future all within a paragraph describing out people try to escape their actions despite the passage of time. The format is unorthodox, and a long chapter, told in the guise of a PowerPoint deck, comes across as amusing at first, then sobering. Jennifer Egan figured out how to wring emotional catharsis out of a PowerPoint deck. In a sense, the past catches up with all the characters presented to tell a story of transformation.