A Visit from the Goon Squad

In Chapter 8, Dolly, Lulu, and Kitty Jackson travel overseas to an undisclosed, remote location to rehabilitate the image of a notorious war criminal called the General with staged photos. Embracing her role, Kitty undergoes a "staggering metamorphosis," which the following passage conveys via visual imagery.

On the day that Dolly plans to stage photos between Kitty and the General—and attempt to redeem both their reputations—Kitty emerges glamorous and well-groomed, a startling reversal from the aged and irrelevant former star Dolly met earlier. Dolly, shocked, takes in Kitty's new appearance:

She'd washed her hair, applied makeup, and slipped into a sleeveless sage-colored dress made of crushed velvet. It brought out flecks of green in her blue eyes and made them look turquoise. Kitty's shoulders were athletically golden, her lips pinkly glossed, her nose lightly freckled. The effect was beyond anything Dolly could have hoped for. She found Kitty almost painful to look at, and tried to avoid it. 

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Many times across Chapter 10, Rob's point of view presents Sasha's boyfriend Drew as Rob's foil. To Rob, Drew possesses the confidence, experience, fearlessness, and access to Sasha that he lacks.

One notable opposition that Rob emphasizes early on is Drew's fondness for swimming. He mentions Drew's physique as a swimmer at the very start of the chapter. Swimming returns later as a way for Rob to draw a contrast between him and Drew:

Now [Drew] swims in the NYU pool, but the chlorine hurts his eyes and it's not the same, he says, with a ceiling over you. Still, he swims there a lot, especially when he's bummed or tense or in a fight with Sasha, "You must've grown up swimming," he said when he first heard you were from Florida [...] But the truth is you've never liked the water—something only Sasha knows about you.

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