Genre Fiction
![Jennifer Egan - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B000AQ783G.jpg)
The Candy House: A Novel (Visit from the Goon Squad, 2)
Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Time, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Oprah Daily, Glamour, USA Today, Parade, Bustle, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Tampa Bay Times, BuzzFeed, Vulture and many more!
From one of the most celebrated writers of our time, a literary figure with cult status, a "sibling novel" to her Pulitzer Prize- and NBCC Award-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad-an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.
The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. 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 interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles-from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets.
If Goon Squad was organized like a concept album, The Candy House incorporates Electronic Dance Music's more disjunctive approach. The parts are titled: Build, Break, Drop. With an emphasis on gaming, portals, and alternate worlds, its structure also suggests the experience of moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.
The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. Egan takes to stunning new heights her "deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture" (Vogue). The Candy House delivers an absolutely extraordinary combination of fierce, exhilarating intelligence and heart.
From one of the most celebrated writers of our time, a literary figure with cult status, a "sibling novel" to her Pulitzer Prize- and NBCC Award-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad-an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.
The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. 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 interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles-from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets.
If Goon Squad was organized like a concept album, The Candy House incorporates Electronic Dance Music's more disjunctive approach. The parts are titled: Build, Break, Drop. With an emphasis on gaming, portals, and alternate worlds, its structure also suggests the experience of moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.
The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. Egan takes to stunning new heights her "deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture" (Vogue). The Candy House delivers an absolutely extraordinary combination of fierce, exhilarating intelligence and heart.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for The Candy House
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Time, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Oprah Daily, Glamour, USA Today, Parade, Bustle, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Tampa Bay Times, Off the Shelf, Buzzfeed, and Vulture!
"Its teeming tapestry of strivers, dropouts, and dreamers as insistently alive as they were 12 years ago… The Candy House, for all its dips and spins and cul-de-sacs, its brain- weevil gadgets and future panics, does what only the best and rarest books can: peel back the thin membrane of ordinary life, and find transcendence on the other side."
-Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
"I'm pretty sure there's nothing Jennifer Egan can't do, so a follow-up to her influential Pulitzer Prize–winning 2010 novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad? Hell, yes. Egan being Egan, this is not a traditional sequel, of course-she calls it a "sibling novel"-but it promises to revisit some peripheral characters from the earlier novel and expand upon their stories with a scope and emotional wallop equal to its predecessor."
-Tom Beer, Kirkus
"Described as a sibling novel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, The Candy House begins with tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton and his venture called Own Your Unconscious, wherein people can download and view their own memories, and share and exchange the memories of others…Technology, intimacy, privacy-these are subjects Egan has tackled before, and with such brilliance and formal daring. I cannot wait!"
-The Millions
"[The Candy House] is a novel that resists form, incorporating tweets and emails from the future in a series of interconnected stories that show the promise of endless intersubjectivity and the perils of finding missed connections. As we continue to make sense of the fractured attachments that social media makes possible in our own world, Egan imagines a present and a future that push us to interrogate what such a collective mind-meld will mean."
-Vulture
"Using the inventiveness that made A Visit From the Goon Squad such a delight, Egan delivers another formally creative novel."
-Buzzfeed
"A complex, compelling read that showcases Egan's masterful storytelling."
-Time
"Another multi-narrator masterpiece about searching for meaning in a crazy world."
-Entertainment Weekly
"A dazzling feat of literary construction th...
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Time, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Oprah Daily, Glamour, USA Today, Parade, Bustle, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Tampa Bay Times, Off the Shelf, Buzzfeed, and Vulture!
"Its teeming tapestry of strivers, dropouts, and dreamers as insistently alive as they were 12 years ago… The Candy House, for all its dips and spins and cul-de-sacs, its brain- weevil gadgets and future panics, does what only the best and rarest books can: peel back the thin membrane of ordinary life, and find transcendence on the other side."
-Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
"I'm pretty sure there's nothing Jennifer Egan can't do, so a follow-up to her influential Pulitzer Prize–winning 2010 novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad? Hell, yes. Egan being Egan, this is not a traditional sequel, of course-she calls it a "sibling novel"-but it promises to revisit some peripheral characters from the earlier novel and expand upon their stories with a scope and emotional wallop equal to its predecessor."
-Tom Beer, Kirkus
"Described as a sibling novel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, The Candy House begins with tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton and his venture called Own Your Unconscious, wherein people can download and view their own memories, and share and exchange the memories of others…Technology, intimacy, privacy-these are subjects Egan has tackled before, and with such brilliance and formal daring. I cannot wait!"
-The Millions
"[The Candy House] is a novel that resists form, incorporating tweets and emails from the future in a series of interconnected stories that show the promise of endless intersubjectivity and the perils of finding missed connections. As we continue to make sense of the fractured attachments that social media makes possible in our own world, Egan imagines a present and a future that push us to interrogate what such a collective mind-meld will mean."
-Vulture
"Using the inventiveness that made A Visit From the Goon Squad such a delight, Egan delivers another formally creative novel."
-Buzzfeed
"A complex, compelling read that showcases Egan's masterful storytelling."
-Time
"Another multi-narrator masterpiece about searching for meaning in a crazy world."
-Entertainment Weekly
"A dazzling feat of literary construction th...
