Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like A Visit from the Goon Squad
The best books like A Visit from the Goon Squad are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Bell Jar, and Educated: A Memoir. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan is about time and aging, music and commerce, identity across decades. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
01
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers · Memoir
Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Bell Jar
02
Sylvia Plath · Memoir
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, one month before Plath's death.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Educated: A Memoir
03
Tara Westover · Memoir
Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Year of Magical Thinking
04
Joan Didion · Memoir
Joan Didion's account of the year following the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, is the most rigorous and unflinching memoir of grief in American literature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Sense of an Ending
05
Julian Barnes · Literary fiction
The Sense of an Ending is a short novel in two parts.
Both dig into time and aging.
Read the summary → - A Farewell to Arms
06
Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction
A Farewell to Arms is set during the First World War in northern Italy and follows Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, who falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Fine Balance
07
Rohinton Mistry · Literary fiction
A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, a period of suspended democracy, forced sterilization, and slum clearances that is barely taught in the West and barely taught in India.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Little Life
08
Hanya Yanagihara · Literary fiction
A Little Life follows four men from college into middle age and beyond — Willem, an actor; JB, a painter; Malcolm, an architect; and Jude, a lawyer with a past that is revealed in increasingly devastating detail as the novel progresses.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
09
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · Literary fiction
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traces the intellectual and spiritual development of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to the edge of adulthood, when he leaves Ireland to pursue life as an artist.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Thousand Acres
10
Jane Smiley · Literary fiction
A Thousand Acres retells King Lear on a thousand-acre Iowa farm in the 1970s.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
11
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · Literary fiction
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins where Tom Sawyer left off — Huck Finn, the outcast son of the town drunk, has been taken in and given a respectable life he doesn't want.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - American Pastoral
12
Philip Roth · Literary fiction
American Pastoral opens with a narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, learning at a high school reunion about the life and death of Seymour "the Swede" Levov — a man who embodied postwar American success so completely he seemed almost allegorical.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like A Visit from the Goon Squad: quick answers
What are the best books like A Visit from the Goon Squad?
The best books like A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with A Visit from the Goon Squad, such as time and aging, music and commerce, identity across decades.
What should I read after A Visit from the Goon Squad?
A natural next read after A Visit from the Goon Squad is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.
What books are similar to A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan?
A Visit from the Goon Squad centers on time and aging, music and commerce, identity across decades. Books with a similar feel include A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
