Another literary book that I should have read rather than listened to. When will I learn? Perhaps never. I did enjoy some of the breaks in form, including the vast store of emails going back and forth about a potential documentary. I imagine if I read the book, I would have noticed more of the connections between the stories.

What an incredible sequel to Goon Squad. I loved revisiting the characters and seeing their lives change. So good.

This was not marketed in any way as part of series?! Why did I not know that going in? It made the book incredibly confusing.

As much as I admire the ambition here, I found this time and space jumper too cool, too intellectual, for me to become emotionally involved. Impressive work, to be held at arm’s length.

This book was everything I wanted it to be. It had me turned pages without even realizing. It was so good!

This hits better than Goon Squad

There was an element, a piece of magic, missing from my reading of Goon Squad that kept me from falling into it. But The Candy House has that magic. I think it's the speculative fiction element of sharing your unconscious with the world and how that ribbon weaves in and out of all the character's stories. It grounds the disconnected pieces.

We don't get much time with the characters since each chapter is like a short story where you're trying to find connections to the other characters from other chapters. Maybe it's because I just finished French Braid which had a similar format, but here it really worked for me. In each chapter, as I read, I asked myself, "why is this specific moment the one the author picked to include?" And it was clear each time. Then there was the added dimension of the Own Your Unconscious, which forces each character to make some kind of choice on whether they use it, contribute to making it, hide from it, to try to bring it down.

I really delayed reading this after seeing really mixed reviews. I don’t think this is one for everyone but I actually really enjoyed it. There are seemingly many different stories/perspectives that eventually make sense all together but I enjoyed each separate “story”. Some of the stories were more compelling than others but Egan has such a unique perspective and I enjoyed her writing and observations. I’ll def check out goon squad now!

Jennifer Egan's The Candy House is a magnificent novel that fully exploits Egan's virtuosity as a writer. And it does this while managing to be a reader's delight. The best book I've read this year by far and the most relevant without being "instructive."

Some critics have called The Candy House a story cycle or even a concept album, but this reader asserts it to be a big swing of a novel using multiple narrators and a variety of stylistic tools that mirror our current means of communication. In other words, there are fewer conversations between characters than there are text exchanges, letters, and even visits into the collective unconscious or the personal memory cube of another character to forward the story. Not that the plot is linear, but it makes emotional sense and comes full circle from our initial way into the tale via the character of Bix -- a far cooler, more conscience-driven seeker who invents the mechanism by which we share our memories, a real uber-Internet. We return to Bix through his son at the end then, in a sort of literary coda, we take one more step in the journey through an outsider, an analog, and, as they say on a film set, it's back to one.

At times the experience of reading Candy House is of looking at a pointillist painting. At other times, it's an Escher. And then there are moments that put us in the midst of a sci-fi thriller. All that is to say that Egan's novel is a deeply satisfying ride by one of our greatest novelists of the moment. READ THIS BOOK.

Jennifer Egan does it again! I love how she works multiple characters and narratives, weaving them together with fine threads. This is a book I know I'll come back to again.

I tried this one several times but it did not work for me. The writing seemed strong but neither the characters nor the storylines were engaging. Parts almost read like a philosophy text. I had trouble seeing how the stories would fit together. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

https://www.tiktok.com/@bettysbooklist/video/7096590692784327978?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en

I physically could not comprehend this book, I think this felt so Meta that after COVID Burnout there was no way for me to enjoy it.

Jennifer Egan instantly became one of my favorite authors as soon as I had finished reading the first chapter of her book "A visit from the Goon Squad". With that book's marvelous accomplishments my expectations were set high and I was eager to read this book.

and the writing of this book doesn't disappoint. Jennifer is still a superb master of her craft, weaving stories and characters together that seem as real as anyone you could meet on the street. I liked the themes this book tried to grapple with. I think they are relevant and should be grappled with.

I, sadly, didnt connect very well to the first main character introduced in the stories. I wish I had a more emotional connection with him, that I could have gotten the urgency of his plot. But alas that wasnt the case and got the book off to a slower start that I would have liked.

At first I had trouble getting into this book -and looked at reviews that assured me that you did not have to read "A Visit from the Goon Squad" first in order to understand and enjoy this book -- I completely disagree! I read "A Visit from the Goon Squad" and loved it so much. Egan's character development and innovative writing really pulled me in and I could not put this book down. I then turned to "The Candy House" which builds on these same characters in the future, I felt having the back stories of these characters enriched my reading of "The Candy House" even though she does provide some background and context in this novel. Given that this book is an exploration of memory, loss and history, this to me bolsters the argument of reading her other book first. The premise is interesting - a tech executive creates a way for people to "own your unconscious" where you can access every memory (and by the way so can others). The way Egan threads together all the characters' stories is brilliant. I highly recommend this book as well as "A Visit from the Goon Squad."

Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This took me much longer than expected to read because I needed to focus on every nerdy little detail.

I enjoyed losing myself in the story, but I still liked Goon Squad better.

This book won't be for everyone and sometimes, it wasn't for me either. But in the end, I enjoyed the journey. THE CANDY HOUSE reads more like interconnected short stories and it was difficult at times to remember how all the pieces were connected. For the most part, the connections weren't relevant. I loved the premise of this near-future tech where we can upload our consciousness to the cloud. Such an interesting exploration of tech ethics that I'm sure we'll need to begin discussing sooner rather than later.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ebook. Similar to The Goon Squad, I really enjoyed the jumping around between characters in this book, and seeing how they were all connected. However, I do wish I had started a character index because at times I got confused about who I was reading about and where they fit in with the rest of the story. I also appreciated that both the people who fully supported technology and those who eluded it were given space, and neither was right or wrong. There was room for both, and there were stories about people with all sorts of perspectives.

This was one of my most anticipated book of the year, and I have to say, it didn’t disappoint.
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While not as formally innovative as its predecessor, A Visit from the Goon Squad (which I highly recommend if you’ve not read it), I found myself immediately pulled in to the world Egan created. She is a world-builder extraordinaire, with characters that seem instantly familiar. Maybe it helps that we’ve previously met some of these characters from Goon Squad, but I’d give more credit to the way Egan cleverly sketches their inner turmoil with light, nuanced touches.
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A lot of the buzz around the book has focused on a new technology, Own Your Unconscious – imagine memory uploads the way we all digitized our music libraries in the late 90s/early aughts and swipable collective memories you could visit – but the true beating heart of the book is about something that Own Your Unconscious approximates but doesn’t achieve (insert metaphor here about social media &c): connection. The stories are interesting because of the promise of this new technology, or Egan’s formal experimentation, but the stories are poignant – touching, even – because of the fallible, fragile search for real connection the characters endlessly pursue.

The novel begins with the introduction of Bix Bouton’s (a character from Egan’s novel A Visit from the Good Squad, although it’s not relevant to know that) new invention a device to upload your memories. Perhaps I could have used that to make sense of much of the book. And, come to think of it, if I were to try and map out the stories and characters in a graphic organizer (as teachers are wont to do) it would probably look like an intricate mandala!

It’s not bad. In fact, I rather enjoyed many of the chapters. However, it was hard work to read and try to follow the thread through all of the stories and characters. There’s just too much!

I went back and read my review of Goon Squad - it was a long time ago! - and found that many of my thoughts are the same, so I’ll share those:

I just finished this book and am a bit speechless at the moment. It's great, it's horrible, it's confusing, it's straight-forward. There are characters I already miss and some I found annoying. I guess that's one definition of a good book...it makes you really want to think about it and talk about it when your finished... Hmmm...
Thank you to #NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

"A forceful, wonderfully fragmented novel of a terrifyingly possible future, as intellectually rigorous as it is formally impressive, and yet another monumental work from Egan."

From my Library journal review.