Pulling off a multi-narrator story in a way that is both true to each character’s voice and not jarring and confusing to the reader is one of the tougher challenges an author can take on.

In “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” Jennifer Egan gives us a narrator, then another, and another, and another, all while shifting time periods and taking us to a different angle of the overall tale through the eyes of another character.  These chapters could easily exist on their own, but she weaves the narratives together in a way that made me on multiple occasions go, “Oh THAT guy is back!”  It should come with a “Beautiful Mind”-style chart to keep everyone straight.

This book won a Pulitzer Prize so my endorsement is hardly going to add to the likeliness people will read it, but the interwoven story of an aging record executive, his younger self, his former band mates, his assistant, her college friends and boyfriend is, in short, delightfully written.  The people themselves are rich, complicated characters who for the most part all have problems, but in the most human of spirits, they try, even when that’s trying at being destructive to themselves and others.

The sign of a good read for me is being so into the story that I don’t flag many pages.  This is one of those.

And nothing I marked this time was to make a really substantive point.  The closest thing to that comes in a chapter narrated by Rhea, a young woman who likes the (then young) record exec named Benne, who himself likes another girl named Alice, who likes another from their group named Scotty, who likes another from their group named Jocelyn, who likes a then record exec who becomes Bennie’s mentor.  (That’s only a fraction of the kind of interplay at work here).

Rhea doesn’t think a lot of herself, especially in comparison with other girls.  Oddly enough, the main thing she dislikes about her appearance is that she has freckles.

“I look like someone threw handfuls of mud at my face,” she says.  “When I was little, my mom told me they were special.  Thank God I’ll be able to remove them, when I’m old enough and can pay for it myself.  Until that time I have my dog collar and green rinse, because how can anyone call me ‘the girl with freckles’ when my hair is green?”

I love that last line.  A lot of us have “freckles,” that thing we see so clearly in the mirror or hear when we open our mouths.  In most cases, nobody else notices.  It’s silly, but something in our mind makes us self-conscious.  So what can we do?  Dye our hair green or compensate in some other way that makes us care less about that supposed problem.

Speaking of what we see in the mirror, this other thing is completely random, but has been staring at me forever and certainly jumped out when I saw it on the page.  Rob narrates this chapter, and in this section talks about his close friendship with Sasha, Bennie’s later assistant.

“You know the scar on her left ankle from a break that had to be operated on when it didn’t heal right; you know the Big Dipper of reddish moles around her belly button and her mothball breath when she first wakes up.”

I’m missing one star (represented by the green), but have always thought there was something resembling a Big Dipper around my right collarbone and extending up onto my neck:

Let this be the only time I take my shirt off for a blog post.  Who would have guessed it would come in a book discussion?

“Sleep and I do not have a good relationship.”

That probably sounds like a direct quote from an earlier post here or my Twitter feed, but is actually a quote from Amy Poehler’s book “Yes Please.”

She is a far busier person than I am with a million more responsibilities in life.  At bedtime though, our brains do the exact same thing.

“As soon as I become prone, my head will begin to unpack,” Poehler writes.  “My mind will turn on and start to hum, which is the opposite of what you need when you begin to switch off.  It is as if I were waiting the whole day for this moment.”

My mind is most guilty of this on the opposite end of the cycle, when I wake up before I intend to, particularly on the weekends.  It starts rolling through all the things I could be doing, and if one of them is something like writing, it will start actually doing the task mentally to the point that I have no real choice but to get up and write it down. (See: blog post, this one)

No amount of “shut uuuuup and sleeeep” can halt this process.  But at least it makes me productive.  Yeah, let’s put that as a never-sleep-until-noon silver lining.

What’s great about this book, like Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me” is that it is the type of behind the scenes look into the life of a fabulously successful creative person that I really enjoy reading.  I’m not on their level, but knowing that we go through some of the same challenges and thought processes is comforting.  Seeing how their hard work on things that started very small is inspirational.

One such section goes in depth with her show Parks and Recreation, with the help of creator/writer Mike Schur.  They talk about what drew them to the show and the way they approached their characters that made them special.  She ends with a piece about each of the show’s stars in the rare opportunity people take to say amazing things about how they feel about their friends.  It’s nice to see a reminder that famous people appreciate the kickass people in their life too.

If you want to watch that kind of thing play out, the cast appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers the night of their series finale and toasted one another.  Here’s part one, and part two of that.

Poehler shares a lot of interesting tidbits from her career, but it’s always funny to see the things that didn’t work out for one reason or another.  She talks about a particular TV failure before Parks & Rec came along.

“Years before, I had worked on a single-camera pilot called North Hollywood, which was also not picked up to series,” Poehler writes.  “Though looking back, it made sense that the show didn’t go — it starred a bunch of losers named Kevin Hart, Jason Segel, and January Jones and was produced by the obviously talentless Judd Apatow.”

Where is our network of failed TV pilots?  Imagine one single episode after another of projects like that.

Throughout the book she also provides a lot of insight, including her take on the adage that the only thing for certain in life is change.

“Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being,” she writes.  “If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier.”

Surf on, my friends.