A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

“Time is a goon, right?” asks a passing character—in a book chock full of passing characters—some one hundred pages into Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. “Isn’t that the expression?”

“I’ve never heard that,” comes the response.

“Would you disagree?”

There’s a pause, and finally the considered judgment. “No.”

Okay, I hadn't heard that sayin…