A Visit from the Goon Squad

When she first appears in A Visit from the Goon Squad, Sasha is in therapy for her kleptomania, having lost her job and her friends, presumably as a result of her condition. We eventually learn that she has had an abusive childhood and her adolescence involved self-destructive behavior. She runs away at seventeen and travels the world for two years, before returning home and going to college. At NYU, she meets Rob, her best friend who accidentally drowns in the East River shortly after his attempted suicide. She also meets and starts dating Drew, who witnesses Rob’s drowning and is unsuccessful at trying to save him. After many years apart, Sasha and Drew reconnect and are “married late” (233); they have two children, Alison and Lincoln. At the end of the novel, Sasha makes sculptures out of objects from her family’s daily life, items that are “casual and meaningless” (265).

In the non-chronological storytelling of Goon Squad, Sasha’s story bookends the novel. In the first chapter, entitled “Found Objects,” she brings a first date, Alex to her apartment. This scene uses foreshadowing, as Sasha is startled “to think of herself as a glint in the hazy memories that Alex would struggle to organize” (14).