Why do people like Jennifer Egan so much?

Post is the title. I don’t think her writing is bad, but I do find it difficult to keep up with. Maybe I’m reading too fast, but I find she switches POV far too often for me to develop a meaningful connection to any of her characters. Right as I’m getting interested in one, the point of view jumps to a character I don’t know, and she spends a good thirty pages introducing them before jumping to another chapter to introduce a new character I also don’t care about.

I’ll have to get ninety pages in, sometimes one-hundred-and-twenty before it returns to what the book was initially about. Obviously I understand these other characters play a role and are equally as important as one another, but it feels frustrating to be yanked from the page turning introduction into a side story about a character whose history I don’t want to follow.

I would tolerate the POV changes if it felt like the book was going somewhere, but both times I’ve tried reading her work, it just feels like the book is jumping around the place without rhyme or reason. Things just happen and all I’m sure by the end every scene in the book will serve a function, but there’s never any through line to make it all feel cohesive. It‘s just scatterbrained and frustrating to read.

I feel like a huge jerk, because from what I know her books are almost universally loved. She won a Pulitzer Prize for god’s sake, that’s not the kind of award to be taken lightly. I just don’t get it? I don’t get why people love her so much when I’ve just found her work so difficult to follow? Anyone else in the same boat? Or, if you like her work, could you try explaining why? Maybe I’m just being stupid. I don’t know, I’d love to hear from someone else.

by thoughtboxthrowaway