I don’t often stop reading a book and give up but I had to with this one. I got over 25% through and I just didn’t get it. It was either way over my head or I’m incredibly dumb but either way, it just wasn’t worth any more of my time to try to figure it out.

Published by Scribner on April 5, 2022

The Candy House is a novel of characters, some of whom first appeared in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. Egan develops the characters and lets them loose to do as they please. Their stories never quite cohere into a plot but telling a story with a conventional plot does not appear to have been Jennifer Egan’s intent. Yet she acknowledges that “without a story, it’s all just information.” And so she tells stories, lots and lots of them.

The novel jumps around in time. Much of it takes place in the immediate future, although the fictional present includes technology that does not exist in our temporal reality. Backstories tend to date back to the 1990s with glimpses of memories formed in the 1960s. Stories also extend into the mid-2030s.

Egan uses her characters to explore themes of identity, affinity, authenticity, privacy, and the price of freedom. She primarily raises those concerns with technology that Bix Bouton invented in 2016. Own Your Unconscious allows people to externalize their consciousness to a Mandala Cube and revisit their memories. An advance in that technology soon allows memories to be uploaded anonymously to a Collective Consciousness (sort of a digital cloud for memories).

Collective memories are available to everyone who wants them. There is, of course, nothing anonymous about memory, as faces of individuals performing good or bad deeds are recognizable to those who dip into the collective. The technology allows crimes to be solved and reduces some versions of evil, but it also creates a new form of surveillance society and sparks a higher level of social paranoia.

Part of the story focuses on the idea of a vacant identity — an identity established on the internet and later abandoned, only to be reinhabited by a proxy (typically a bot) that uses clues to the originator’s personality to impersonate the creator. Some people vacate those identities to escape from a society based on data. The escapees are known as “eluders” because they strive to remain invisible to the digital world.

Since there is no overriding plot, readers might get of sense of whether The Candy House is their kind of book by learning something about the characters. There are too many to mention, but some stand out more than others.

A music producer and an anthropologist named Miranda Kline had two daughters. Miranda abandoned her daughters for a few years to study the “affinities” that make people like and trust each other. She developed “formulas for predicting human inclinations.” Miranda studied a closed, isolated society. She didn’t think her predictive formulas would work in a large society because people would be unwilling to supply all of the information that the formulas require. She didn’t anticipate the willingness of individuals to abandon their privacy, to live their lives in the spotlight of social media. (The potential consequence of documenting your life on social media is another of the novel’s themes.) A few years after Bix Bouton commercialized her ideas, a displeased Miranda eluded.

Rebecca Amari is obsessed with authenticity. So is Alfred Hollander. Alfred made a long, tedious documentary about geese because he viewed animal behavior as authentic. His next project involved screaming whenever he believed people were being phony to provoke authentic responses. Rebecca takes a more scholarly approach, but she is worried that any study of authenticity will become so wrapped up in “phony academic bullshit” that it will not attain the authenticity she seeks to understand.

Alfred’s brother Ames has a mysterious connection to the military. His brother Miles messed up his life in various ways before ending up in rehab and becoming a drug counselor. His cousin Sasha had a compulsion to steal before turning her life around and made a career by recycling trash into art. Visiting Sasha on impulse only accentuates Miles’ sense of failure. Miles describes his story as one of redemption because redemption stories have “narrative power.” Lucky for Miles, “America loves a sinner,” so he decides to enter politics.

Sasha’s husband Drew, a surgeon, has his own demons, living the memory of a friend’s drowning for which he holds himself responsible. Bix was in their company until they entered the river. Sasha and Drew’s son Lincoln is a counter. His world is about numbers, statistics, percentages. His work involves the detection of proxies posing as humans in social media. Outside of that realm, he is socially awkward. Lincoln is representative of individuals who think humans are less complicated when they are represented as data. One of the novel’s themes is the difference between impressionists and empiricists, the difference between those who “tend toward the romantic” and those who tend toward scientific detachment. One of the novel’s questions is whether it is possible for someone to be both at the same time.

A chapter narrated by Molly offers a funny take on the importance that teen girls place on being “in” with the right person, leading to a desperate jockeying for social status. Another chapter seems to be part of a future instruction manual for infiltrating and gathering intelligence about violent men. A chapter written as text messages became a bit wearying to read.

So that’s what The Candy House is. Individual stories, loosely bound by connections in the ways we are all connected — by family, acquaintance, interests, memories, and media. A lot happens during the course of the novel, including interesting events: an attempt to commit suicide by jumping from a hot air balloon; a potentially violent quarrel between neighbors about whether a fence post has been moved. Still, readers are unlikely to become attached to any character because, their stories having been told, the novel moves on to someone else. They might reappear in a memory or be mentioned as the relative of another character, but the novel is frustrating in its failure to follow the full lives of its most interesting characters. Rebecca Amari seems to be a central character before she becomes lost in the crowd. Bix Bouton is frequently mentioned but not often seen, although his son Gregory makes a late appearance. We learn what happened to Miranda but we don’t see it happen. Yet that’s life, and that might be Egan’s point. We drift in and out of each other’s lives. We might hear about someone we used to know, we might remember them, we might look them up on social media, but after our stories diverge, they might never rejoin. (On the other hand, I was happy to see the mystery of Ames’ military career resolved in the last chapter.)

Like characters, intriguing concepts (such as “vacant identities” and “proxies”) are introduced early in the story before they all but disappear. Other themes, including the perils of collective consciousness, show up more consistently. Gregory offers the most useful take in that regard. Gregory rejected his father’s Own Your Consciousness, viewing it as an existential threat to fiction. Gregory wants to be a writer but can’t finish his book after Bix dies. A visit in the 2030s with his former writing teacher leads to an epiphany. Gregory discovers that we don’t need technology to create a collective consciousness. Fiction does that by letting readers “roam with absolute freedom through the human collective.” Writers have the vision to see “a galaxy of human lives,” each “propelled by a singular force that was inexhaustible,” a collective that hurtles toward the writer’s curiosity, each star in the galaxy an individual story for the writer to tell.

That might be Egan’s purpose — the selection of unique stars in the galaxy of human lives, showing how the characters or their stories relate to each other. Some of the stories are so evocative that may trigger, or become embedded within, the reader’s own memories. The book ends with a wonderful scene in which a kid playing baseball is confident that, while he has never hit a pitch in his life, each failure is an explainable aberration from the norm in which he always hits a home run. The kid’s story could be any story of self-delusion or self-confidence, the story of people who don’t let the past stop them from trying. It also reminds the reader that successes, like failures, are transitory; that there are always new challenges ahead; that past performance is no guarantee of future success or failure. The lesson I took from The Candy House is that the future keeps coming, that every person has a different future and an infinite number of potential futures, and that we shouldn’t be lost to the possibility of writing our own story.

RECOMMENDED

A wild and raucous follow up to Goon Squad, Egan's readers will love this new wild ride. The writing is similar though the story differs. Like a heart-felt and moving episode of Black Mirror, with an EDM background, this novel will be a favorite for many.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
I read half of this and put it down. Although the voice of each character was unique there wasn't enough plot for me to finish the book. Seemed like Egan was more interested in writing trendy, edgey characters than a compelling story.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.*

Somehow I haven't read anything by Jennifer Egan despite having 3 of her titles on my TBR for ages.

When NetGalley offered the chance to preview this ARC I lept at the opportunity.

Not knowing if this is typical for the author or unique to this story, I struggled a bit to follow the storyline and definitely found myself wondering how each chapter had anything to do with the last.

The Candy House is apparently a sequel to A Visit from the Goon Squad...however you know I didn't read that so I can't really speak to how it follows. My understanding is that the characters reappear. That is how I would describe this book. The storyline isn't thorough, and there isn't a specific plotline. Rather there is a common thread that carries across each character's narrative.

Loosely, the story ties together the brainchild of Bix Bouton, a tech genius who monetizes the ideas of cultural anthropologist Miranda Kline into a dystopian social media project called Own Your Unconscious. The narratives follow Bix, his children, his collaborators, friends, and foes.

It is weird, and weirdly magnetic. I find myself thinking about the possibility that something like this is in the works. And I shudder.

*with thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.

This was my first Jennifer Egan book and it sort of fell flat for me. I wanted to love this, but it felt a bit boring at points.

The "cousin" or "sibling" novel concept is a new one to me, but after reading A Visit From the Goon Squad recently and loving it, I was thrilled to revisit so many characters from that book that felt like friends by the end of it. I was thrilled to read more about these characters in The Candy House, and for many of them, find out what happened to them in the future. There is an interesting look at memory and technology in this book, which is certainly thought-provoking and disturbing at times. What if you could download your memories outside of your body? Would you? Beyond technology, the book also explores memory and the stories we tell ourselves about people. There is so much to explore with this topic, and Egan does it in her brilliant way. This book is written in such a unique way, similar to Goon Squad, that is hard to describe and even harder to forget.

I hate to say it but this was a DNF for me. I was excited for it and really wanted to like it. I've read and liked Egan's short stories and three of her novels but even though I kept pushing myself to get through this one, I just couldn't and gave up at 66%.

I liked the idea of the futuristic social media technology and I appreciated that all of the (very large cast of) characters had unique voices, but I just couldn't get into this story, even 2/3 in, I wasn't sure what the point was.

I found The Candy House a pleasurable and always unpredictable read. Jen Egan’s style in this novel rivals the style of A Visit to the Goon Squad. It is demanding yet rewarding. The characters have depth and their years in this novel are vivid and often tragic. Egan has certainly written a marvelous follow up to Goon Squad.

I guess I should start with that I haven’t read Goon Squad, though I don’t feel like I had trouble getting to know the characters, their connections, or understanding the story. This book is tough to describe, but WHAT a ride. I enjoyed being kept on my toes with the changing POV styles and chapter formats, very box of chocolates a la Forrest Gump, *your brian says the next line here*

pros:
- strong character voices
- beautifully, heart-breakingly emotional
- inter-connectivity off the charts, the kind of tangled web I love to read
- lovely, subtle mirrors of relationships, conversations, and thoughts as literal bookends at the beginning and ending

cons:
- level of connection definitely challenging, I feel like this may need to be “your thing” to really vibe with the story
- a few chapters seem gratuitous where we don’t seem to get insight into either the workings of Own Your Unconscious / Collective Consciousness or how this character relates to the whole
- varying time periods weren’t always strong, 1960s and 2020s/30s most successful for me

A brain teaser of a book asking essential questions about what we give away on social media and how far will/can it go. What do you actually end up paying for what seems free? “Never trust a candy house!”

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. 🙏🏼

You will hear conflicting opinions about this point, but count me in the “you should read A Visit From the Goon Squad first” camp. One of the last chapters, especially, benefits from having that background. That said, I loved this! Like Goon Squad, it is composed of interconnected vignettes. Some are straightforward narratives, but Egan pushes us with the form of a few others. She is a writer who can seemingly do anything. She is grappling with issues of memory and privacy that affect all of us, but does so with an underlying sense of hope that the best of humanity won’t be lost.

I had a chance to get this on Audio and I have to tell you as much as I like Jennifer Egan and know how she loves to put her ducks in a row. I found the audio very hard to follow as I was driving. Maybe the printed copy would be a better idea so I can back page when I'm left scratching my head. Anyway I thought I would give my honest review, Jennifer I have read your books in the pass and loved them, this one I will eventuality finish.....

Jennifer Egan never ceases to amaze me with her writing. Its not like anyone else’s plus has some added bonuses. Technology is such a hot topic these days with how intricately its woven into our lives so this one might hit deep.

I was really looking forward to reading this book, however once I started, I realized that I wasn't the right audience for it. The book contains a lot of intellectual concepts that at times were just beyond me - and I have 3 advanced degrees. Of course, none of them are in math or science. LOL Perhaps if I was having a conversation with someone about these things where I could ask questions, but alas, that was not possible here. There were multiple characters, time lines and concepts presented and again, was hard for me to keep straight. I can read 1200 page fantasy books with dozens of characters and keep everything straight, but for some reason this subject matter was beyond me.

Don't let my inability to grasp all of the concepts discourage you from trying out this book. The author is clearly a gifted writer, the book just wasn't for me at this time. I give it 3 stars because of her skilled writing, even though the book didn't resonate with me.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley and Scribner. All opinions are my own.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan can be read as a sequel to A Visit From the Goon Squad or as a standalone. If you liked Goon Squad, then I think you will enjoy The Candy House. It features not only some of the same characters, but also the same writing style and quirky format. Kind of a techy-fiction novel, which goes well with the chapter of Tweets. If you are reading as a standalone, give it a try, you might just enjoy something a little different.

Loved the idea behind this book! The author did an excellent job embodying the different characters in different voices. The novel itself is very difficult to describe, but it is worth a read. While it isn't necessary, reading A Visit From The Good Squad will provide more context and a greater understanding.

"Never trust a candy house!"

What happens when you no longer own your thoughts and memories? Do you really want to know what someone was thinking during your most coveted memories? These questions are explored in The Candy House, a multi-layered, multi-modal, and complex novel about a network of shared consciousness and the dangers of losing authenticity.

“Not every story needs to be told.”

An anthropologist's work on predictive behavior leads to the development of Own Your Unconscious, a virtual platform where one can upload memories to relive their favorite experiences and to learn what others thought during certain moments in time. These experiences lead to joy and misery, as well as a quest for authenticity.

This is an intricate and provocative novel that is difficult to describe. The format mirrors A Visit to the Goon Squad, except where the Goon Squad mirrors a concept album, The Candy House follows the format of electronic dance music.


This was a tense and intense reading experience... I can’t stop thinking about it since I have finished,

Thank you to negalley and publishers for an e-gallery of this novel for my honest review.

With the publication of The Candy House, Pulitzer award winning Jennifer Egan may just do it again. Twelve years later in what sometimes seems like an alternate America, characters from the previous book join their progeny in an alternate history of the years 1991-2035.
Software has been developed that allows one to upload their memories to the web where others can access them. Egan employs different styles for different chapters including an owner's manual, emails, soap opera. Characters shift from front to backstage and a Kindle with the xray feature will be very useful.

Finished reading this a day before book release, but I will be thinking about it for a while. I adore Jennifer Egan and Visit from the Goon Squad is one of my favorite books of all time. Inventive, funny, witty, interesting, touching- all the things. I loved Manhattan Beach as much, but obviously in a different way since the story is such a different story. I've purchased copies of both for friends and colleagues- so I'm a massive Egan fan.

All this to say that The Candy House was not quite what I was expecting. Did it live up to Good Squad? For me, no. And for the first half of the book I was both perplexed and frustrated. However, the back half brought enough of the story together that I went from annoyance to credence, and in the end this is a four and a half star book to me. I think that the narrative structure is not that dissimilar from Goon Squad, and my memory of character names is horrific but even I was able to make most of the connections with our friends from the last book. What is absolutely best about this, however, is the range and scope of the writing. No powerpoint chapter here (though she does play with form), and I think as a meditation on memory and collective consciousness (versus music and time), it's effective. In fact the more I think and write about it- the more I appreciate this book. Most importantly, she made me care about some of these characters, and it reflected a world that may not quite be here yet but is substantially already our own- and like all good literature, it points that mirror back at us and asks what we are going to do about it. Bonus points for lots of Joycean feeling (even a Dubliners reference), so rounding up to five final stars. Just go in knowing that this Candy House is still a bit of spun sugar and not gold.

The Candy House had so much hype but ended up being a huge disappointment for me. I kept putting it down and begrudgingly picking it back up for about a week before deciding not to finish. It was the Lincoln chapter that did it for me; all the numbers and statistics were making my head spin. I understand that there’s a common thread to all the stories but I honestly don’t care enough to finish. I loved one of Jennifer Egan’s early books, Look At Me, but I couldn’t stand Goon Squad and this book so I don’t think I’ll be reading any of her future books. They just don’t seem to be right for me.