The Candy House
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4.2 • 16 Ratings
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD
A Time Magazine Must-Read
'A complex, compelling read that showcases Egan's masterful storytelling' TIME
'A dazzling feat of literary construction' VOGUE
From one of the most dazzling and iconic writers of our time comes an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity, privacy, and meaning in a world where our memories are no longer our own--featuring characters from A Visit from the Goon Squad.
It's 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He's forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalising" memory. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, Own Your Unconscious--that allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others--has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.
In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game. Egan takes her "deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture" (Vogue) to stunning new heights and delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With these sci-fi stories about tech culture and humanity, novelist Jennifer Egan proves she’s always full of surprises. At the dawn of the 2010s, tech superstar Bix Bouton discovers the groundbreaking human-behaviour research of anthropologist Miranda Klein, which he co-opts to start a disruptive new company. By 2020, not everyone wants to share the contents of their brains in Bix’s worldwide database, but the genie’s out of the bottle. That begins a fascinating roundelay of interconnected stories about everyday lives in a tech-dominated culture. We loved Alfred, who tries to enrol his dachshund in pre-K classes; cheered on 13-year-old Molly, socially banished by her mean-girl ex-BFF; and were rapt by Lulu’s real-time account of an espionage assignment gone horribly wrong. A sort-of sequel to Egan’s breakthrough bestseller A Visit From The Goon Squad , these near-future vignettes feel so real and timely that halfway through, we were already looking forward to reading The Candy House a second time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Egan returns to the fertile territory and characters of A Visit from the Goon Squad with an electrifying and shape-shifting story that one-ups its Pulitzer-winning predecessor. I'll see your PowerPoint chapter, Egan seems to say, and raise you a chapter in tweets, and another in emails and texts. In the near future, a platform called Own Your Unconscious allows memories to be uploaded to the cloud and accessed by anyone. "Counters" seek to ferret out "proxies" that help hide "eluders" who resist merging their "gray grabs" to the collective in order to leave their online personae behind. Not everyone sees this as panacea, and a countermovement called Mondrian arises. Appearances from music producer Bennie Salazar, his mentor Lou Kline, and their lovers and children provide sharp pleasures for Goon Squad fans, and Egan cleverly echoes the ambitious, savvy marketing schemes of real-world tech barons with Own Your Unconscious. It casts its spell on Bennie, whose punk rock days with the Flaming Dildos are long past: "Tongue-in-cheek nostalgia is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will, through which we hope to lure in a new generation and bewitch them," he writes in an email. Twisting through myriad points of view, narrative styles, and divergent voices, Egan proves herself as perceptive an interpreter of the necessity of human connection as ever, and her vision is as irresistible as the tech she describes. This is Egan's best yet.
Customer Reviews
An excellent follow up
I really enjoyed this book and welcomed being back in the world begun in Welcome to the Goon Squad. Can't wait to reread.
As good as Goon Squad
I can’t give it higher praise than that!