Jennifer Egan has a gift for threading together a host of characters in a meaningful and memorable way, often to tell a cautionary tale, which The Candy House certainly is. It is a must read for our decade.

This one has already been named one of the best books of 2022, so I will just echo that sentiment here: This is one of the best books of 2022.

Jennifer Egan's brain just works in a different way than most humans, and we are so incredibly lucky for it. A set of interconnected stories that will have the reader flipping back and forth and rereading and exclaiming with delight when they recognize someone from a few chapters ago, "The Candy House" is cerebral and emotional all at once.

So I just finished The Candy House and I am hungry to find friends who've read it so that I can hash out all of my thoughts. I don't even know how I feel about any of it and I kinda like that I am this mixed up. On the one had, I really loved the episodic, non-linear experimental way that Jennifer Egan put this together (having not read her other works, I've heard this is just her style?). It kept me on my toes and forced me to stop trying to read it in my normal way. I had to give myself permission to not try and connect all the dots and know all the things; I had to relax and enjoy it for the journey that it was. As much as I enjoyed that, I also was uncomfortable with it. I didn't always like not knowing how the puzzle pieces fit and I hated thinking I was missing something or that I was missing the point because I couldn't see the small picture inside the bigger one.

Days later, I'm still pondering all the things that The Candy House brought up about technology and relationships and how those work separately and together, about the ripple effect of relationships and how one innocuous moment can influence the entire life of someone, about how the more we progress, we sometimes seem to regress, and maybe at the heart of all of this the ideas of loneliness and grief and loss and desire and love and connection.

I've talked two of my colleagues and friends into reading The Candy House and I cannot wait to hear what they think and why they think it.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan is an amazing book that makes you not want to put down. Awesome read.

Wow! Jennifer Egan does it again with her king-awaited follow-up to Goon Squad. The connections between characters and the intricacies of those connections are masterfully unspooled before the reader. Egan is a genius.

I received this book to offer it as a book club read. However, I and the group couldn't get into this one. "A Visit from the Goon Squad" is still one of my favs, but this didn't hit me.

Jennifer Egan's The Candy House is the long-awaited follow-up novel to A Visit from the Goon Squad. Many of the characters overlap in this set of linking stories.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

Interconnected stories from the 1970s-2030s, many featuring a Facebook-like invention where people can upload their unconsciousness for others to experience and the resistance to this technology.

After reading and loving A Visit From the Goon Squad, I was looking forward to reading this follow up from Egan.

I loved how she told each chapter from a different character’s perspective so the reader could see the trickle down effect that this new technology had on various people.

I also think she did the whole “tech future” in a really thoughtful way. It was scary to think about a future in which technology companies have so much hold over our memories, but it’s not unthinkable. She made that world feel real and tangible.

While the book utilizes characters from the previous work, A Visit from the Goon Squad, you can still enjoy this book without reading the previous. I liked the interconnecting stories and while some felt repetitive, overall it was a good technique. I felt the book came of a little “preachy” at times.

Jennifer Egan writes as fluidly and thoughtfully as always in The Candy House, though this was probably my least favorite among her books to date.

I’ll start by saying that while this is technically a sequel to A Visit from the Goon Squad, it doesn’t really feel like one. It’s more like a companion novel with a few characters in common. This in itself isn’t a problem, but something readers may want to be aware of.

I didn’t love the Speculative Fiction aspect of this. But I also don’t love Speculative Fiction in general, and if you do, you’ll likely enjoy this more than I did.

And while the large cast of characters is interesting to an extent and Egan weaves their stories together well, it’s hard to care much about any of them because we don’t stay with them long enough to truly invest. Most of them didn’t interest me much anyway, except for the empiricist, who was delightful.

Egan’s writing is lovely as always, but plot wise this wasn’t my favorite. I still think The Keep is her best work and would recommend that above all the others, but Manhattan Beach and the original Goon Squad novel are great as well.

I feel like, at this point, I don't need to add too much praise since this book has won all the awards! And rightly so. I will note that it took me a long time to get into this book. I'm not sure I would have followed through without the buzz. But I'm very glad I did. This cast of characters will stick with me for a long, long time.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this one as I have not read the previous book. This book is a series of interconnected stories and that is something that I usually find interesting. With this book however, I was thrown off by the different writing styles and overall could not get engaged.

It’s been said that it’s not necessary to read the first book to enjoy this one, but I disagree. If I hadn’t just reread A Visit from the Goon Squad, I don’t think I would have liked this book as much. References to characters from the previous book were the beating heart of this one. While I did enjoy reading this, I would consider it a true sequel that would be quite dry read on its own.

Couldn't get into this one, despite being a fan of the author's previous work, but in terms of potential purchase for a library it would be an unqualified "yes". Not every book is for every reader but Egan's reputation has earned her new titles automatic inclusion in a robust collection.

The Candy House is effectively a companion/sequel to Egan's 2011 Pulitzer-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad. It follows the same style of long chapters that tell individual, yet interconnected stories, so if you liked the style of Goon Squad, you’ll probably enjoy this one as well. In this novel, the thing that somewhat tenuously ties the stories together is a semi-dystopian-yet-still-something-that-could-happen-in-our-lifetime technology called Own Your Unconscious, a kind of cloud where people can upload their memories and view those of others.
While the premise seems flashy, the book is actually a series of deep and thoughtful character studies set against an intellectual backdrop of big ideas evoked by the new technology (social media, memory, privacy, etc.). This book felt less cohesive to me than Goon Squad—more like a series of vaguely linked short stories than a novel. As with a short story collection, I found the chapters/characters to be hit-or-miss, with some gems and some duds, but I still found the overall book thought-provoking and always appreciate Egan’s willingness to experiment.

I was very excited about this book, but struggled as I had not read Egan's previous work. I put this aside until I finish her other work and will revisit. This was a novel which felt a bit like work and was difficult to fully fall into. Again, I think much of that was timing and the lack of background knowledge from the author's previous work

The Candy House has taken me a while to get through. The disjointed chapters, especially those that were all texts or emails, were frustrating reading for me. I don’t know why authors thinks texts and emails are so fascinating to read? Egan an excellent author and perhaps I would have enjoyed this if I had read The Goon Squad for a second time. However, time is getting shorter and the book pile is getting longer, so few books are read twice.
Recommended for Egan fans.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. Jennifer Egan does it again - this book is *chef's kiss*. I actually went back and read A Visit from The Goon Squad in preparation for this novel, as it had been over 10 years since I'd read it. I highly recommend doing that - there is a ton of character crossover. I actually kept a copy of the Goon Squad on my Kindle so I could search for character names and make connections. I'm not sure if that was overkill, but it worked for me. Regardless of the connections, this isn't necessarily a sequel in the traditional sense, as the plot centers around a new technology that allows people to upload their memories to a collective for themselves and others to relive. The plot centers around this and all its repercussions. It's extremely well done and thought-provoking. There's a large list of characters, all who were intriguing and fresh. This book has rocketed Egan up on my list of favorite authors - need to go back and read her backlist now.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

This book was very hard to keep track of characters and what was happening. I’m not sure if it’s just the authors style since I haven’t read and of her other books or if this book was just different but it missed the mark for me. I thought the story was interesting enough but literally had to start jotting down notes about characters to remember what was going on. I would still try a different book from this author as I’m always open to all literature.