I re-read A Visit From the Goon Squad in anticipation of this book since I loved that book as well as Manhattan Beach. Something about this book felt off and did not capture my interest and I was unable to finish this book. Thank you for the opportunity.

Jennifer Egan is at it again, creating the most fascinating characters and linking them together in the wildest ways. You do not need to have read A Visit from the Goon Squad, but know that if you did, you will love this one. Literary fiction with a sci-fi twist, this is one you won't be able to put down.

I didn't read the previous book here, so maybe I'm missing something with the characters. I could not connect with them. Jumping between them, I only feel a superficial understanding of each. For the most part, they reminded me of the people who really like to hear themselves speak and could really use a little more listening time. Perhaps I can go back and read the highly acclaimed first book and it will round out these very flat people for me. Alone, I didn't feel it.

Special thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Oh how do I describe this book. At first I was confused. The chapters were like short stories of different people, but then it all comes together and I liked what I was reading!

I really don't know where to begin. Its very complex and you better pay attention but its about technology and I am one of those people who cannot keep up. Powerpoint? Huh? Memes? Facebook and everyone living in perfection with beautiful houses and families with no drug addicts, cheaters, bankruptcy.

This book is set in the near future, and the reference to "The Candy House" is Hansel and Gretel and the house made of candy and how nothing comes for free. Bixby or Box comes up with Own Your Conscious where if you upload and share your memories, you can access other people's memories. And then there are the skeptics, which I'm sure I would be.

A little confusing, so I'm taking away one star, but I can't stop thinking about this book and those are the best kinds.

I don’t usually give up on a book, but I just couldn’t get into this one. I was so disappointed that it did not live up to all the hype for me. It begins with Bix who created technology that helps you to recall memories, yet later it becomes flawed. Then the story continues to introduce other characters whose own stories are bizarre. The concept alone was intriguing but I found it very hard to follow. Technology overload and varying POV for various stories that seemed too disconnected. I found that you had to really dismiss everything else to fully concentrate on this book, so for me, that made it not enjoyable. The characters were not relatable, and I didn’t care for them. I’m told this was a sequel but one didn’t need to read the first (which I hadn’t) before reading this. I believe myself to be pretty intelligent, but I was lost.
At this time, it will go back on my shelf and perhaps I will try to revisit this book in hopes that I’m wrong and it will be more worthy to read then. Many thanks to #netgalley #thecandyhouse #jenniferegan for the opportunity to read and review this book.

What an incredible read! Even though I struggled a bit following all the characters, I savored every moment of this novel. I would have loved a quicker introduction to the dystopian aspect of the story with more information about the collective but that is because I loved the idea so much I needed more! I recommend this book to readers of literary dystopian stories. It will not disappoint!

This is a trippy read that once I got into, I couldn't put down. It won't be for everyone and sometimes I had to work at reading this book but it was well worth my time in the end. Jennifer Egan is truly a talent.

This book follows the next wave of internet juggernaut, facebook-like, Mandala. They have found out how to digitize consciousness. To access and search other people's memories and consciousness, you have to upload your own memories to the collective. What are the consequences of this mass-data collection? What are different responses from society? These are the larger issues that Egan is focused on.

You don’t have to read or re-read Goon Squad to enjoy Candy House, but many of the characters and families from her previous novel are adjacent to the stories in Candy House. I have to admit, I don’t remember any of the characters from The Goon Squad, but I often think about the concepts and events that played out. Egan’s new book continues to do what Goon Squad did so well: commenting on our society and predicting what is around the bend.

At the end of Goon Squad, influencer marketing is seen as fake and taboo, but also still a very effective strategy, so the main narrator works to create an under-the-table campaign to promote a concert. Then the Fyre Festival happened. And weird, MCU level, TikTok campaigns.

Candy House follows a similar narrative structure to Goon Squad. Each chapter or section is from a different point of view, but all of the characters are related and interconnected. Egan does a breathtaking job of switching narrative voices. In one chapter the parent's children are little and not really part of the plot, but the next chapter follows their son, now in his “twenty-somethings”. This is both annoying and poignant. In trying to follow the plot it can feel disjointed. However, in looking at the larger arcs of how society changes and how quickly life passes, it matched the tone of the novel.

Jennifer Egan flexes her literary and social criticism muscles in these books. Her predicting what is next in society can be seen as prescient, or just paying attention.

One of the chapters appeared earlier this year in the New Yorker. It’s worth checking reading to see if you enjoy her writing style and story.

I didn’t realize this was a sequel until I had already gotten it. I asked a few people if it could be read standalone and they said it wouldn’t make much sense so I’m going to wait until I can read the goon squad.

It's always a celebration when the world gets a new book by Jennifer Egan. Today is that day. Her latest book The Candy House is what some people are calling a sequel but A Visit from the Goon Squad came out in 2010 so no one expects you to remember every name from that book to this book. I know I didn't remember all of them. It does not matter so don't panic. This book is a smorgasbord of a book. It's about the good and bad of technolgy. Each chapter relates to the other but it's all told in different styles. Some you will like and some you may not. It shouldn't stop you from being disappointed in this novel. I enjoyed it but got frustrated at times because the pace would slow and I'd be like I just want this to end. Then I would continue and a chapter I enjoyed would follow. The chapters that I loved were memorable and reminded me of the world we live in today. Not everything has to be entertaining but you still can learn from it and it's ok to be challenged with somehting you're not used to. It's going to be a book that will have two camps of the lovers and the haters of this book. Sound familiar! Let's just read the book like it's a smorgasbord, we don't have to love everything on it but let's all sit down TOGETHER and enjoy the book and discuss. Thank you to Scribner and Net Galley for the advance copy.

What the hell did I just read! I finished the book and have no idea what it was about. The chapters were all over the place from a bunch of different POV, and they never really connected together. The emails/tweets were confusing and I am still not sure what the story plot of this book was. Admittedly, I did not read her other book - A Visit From the Goon Squad - but was under the impression it was not necessary since this was supposed to be a softof prequel. This was a hard one for me to finish! Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the eARC of this book to review and provide my honest opinion.

Tech genius Bix Bouton works out how to download the contents of the human mind after participating in a discussion group of university professors. He serves up this technology to the masses via his company Mandala. The story follows several characters as they choose to accept or reject the consequences of this far-reaching new world.

Although there is a “sister” novel that precedes this work, I read this novel as a stand-alone and it works in this way. It provides an interesting perspective on technology versus privacy and the willingness of so many to give up their personal space without fully considering the implications. The narrators are varied but interconnected to give a multi-faceted picture of the way Mandala’s “Own Your Unconscious” product both enhances and complicates their lives.

If you enjoy futuristic fiction, I’d recommend this one. While it’s not sci-fi or dystopian per se, it has some of these elements that make it intriguing. The writing is top-notch and it gives you some food for thought in this climate of ever-evolving technology.

I did pick up a copy of the related novel A Visit from the Goon Squad when I came across it at my favorite book source the other day. It won the Pulitzer Prize and after reading The Candy House, I’m looking forward to reading more from Jennifer Egan.

While at times the collection of interlinked stories here seems determined to be inaccessible, Egan feels confident and assured allowing herself to experiment with the form of fiction in ways she previously only hinted at.

Like Egan’s Pulitzer Prize winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, I’d say this book is best described as not a novel but a collection of interrelated short stories, jumping around in time, place, character (never the same POV character more than once though characters reappear throughout the book) and even format. One common theme running throughout is social media and privacy, as in the alternate reality present/future this book is set in, there are two services we don’t have in our world - one which allows you to essentially download all your memories (and then share with the public if you so desire), as well as an alternate one which allows you to escape your identity while leaving someone posing as you. But there is also a lot more going on about family, relationships, and the interconnectedness of people.

The book is theoretically a follow up to Goon Squad, as many of the characters from that book make brief appearances, or their relatives too. However, as much as I loved that book (it was a 5 star read and a top ten book of the year), that was back in 2011 so I can’t say I really remember it. Perhaps it would have been a richer experience for me reading this book if I had read that one more recently, but I still loved it.

All that being said, this is going to be a very polarizing, love it or hate it book. Indeed, while several of my trusted reader friends loved it, others strongly disliked it and complained it was boring and/or incomprehensible. But I found it mesmerizing and so well written!

If you don’t like short stories, if you only like books with linear narratives, if you don’t like to think while reading - this one is probably not for you. Also definitely one better read than listened to so you can flip back and forth and/or search your e-book for character names, and one best read in as few long stretches as possible, rather than little bits at a time, so you can see all the connections unfold. If that sounds like your cup of tea, give this one a try!

Not quite as brilliant as Goon Squad in my opinion, but I still loved reading it.

The Candy House is a spirited, chaotic at times, and bizarre read. It was wonderful to revisit characters we met in A Visit from the Goon Squad and just like that book, this one is quirky, shocking, and utterly delightful. Somehow the author manages to confuse and entertain the reader at the same time. The Candy House is another brilliant turn for the talented and wholly original Jennifer Egan.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for this ARC.

This was such an intriguing futuristic, "Black Mirror" - esque, techy book and I really liked it!

I love the way this author writes, she has such a unique writing style. I liked how we learn the inner dialogues of a lot of the main characters throughout this story - their idiosyncrasies, their fears, their truths... It was a complex and mind-binding ride throughout. I felt like each "chapter" was kind of like an individual episode of Black Mirror - so if you are a fan of that series I also recommend this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for providing a digital ARC for review!

Egan's previous novel A Visit from the Goon Squad stuck with me long after I read it. I knew this book would ask me to think, to pull threads together, and to sink into a style of storytelling that is anything but typical.

"Own Your Unconscious" is tech giant Mandala's new program to revisit and share memories. For those who participate, you can grant access to recorded thoughts and memories.

This is a read that requires your full attention and creative thinking. There are many characters; we move back and forth in time. There's a lot to keep track of and themes are moving in and out of focus constantly. What's cool about that is that it embodies the very arguments about it means to be human that Egan is exploring. These are interconnected stories with a variety of voices and characters (I didn't remember all of them from Goon Squad) and one can find themselves a little lost, at times in the narrative style.

Still, I loved it.

The themes on privacy, surveillance, what we sacrifice of humanity to be seen and known are ever present.

I recommend reading this with pen and notebook in hand.

This literary novel is packed with so many entwining and complex stories that you need to approach it like a super-rich brownie: small bites to get through the dense deliciousness. It’s a plunge into a whirling confection of contemporary archetypes: the first and most successful record executive who’s now faded in a digital world; his two daughters and the second-generation legacy they carve out for themselves; their mom who abandons the girls for years in pursuit of her PhD in sociology, and goes to live with a jungle tribe where she gleans formulas of predictable human behavior that become the basis of an academic book she published; the billionaire, famous social media exec who takes those formulas in order to create a dystopian offering.

This product, “Own Your Unconscious,” enables you to digitize all your memories onto a cube. If you choose to share your memories with the rest of the world, then you can see everyone else’s who has shared. One of the daughters starts searching to solve a mystery of what happened to her father in the early 1970’s in the redwood forest north of San Francisco. But dystopian downsides and philosophical debate surrounds to this memory sharing device and new collective unconsciousness. Crimes get solved while every day privacy gets breached. A non-profit and “the Matrix unplugged” counterculture of “eluders” arises to resist the Cube and all it represents. What does it mean to be autonomous within shared human memory files? And like the dark underbelly of fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel, beware of a Candy House.

The book picks up where Egan’s Good Squad left off, but you don’t need to have read it to dive in here, but it helps.

Egan’s sharp insights and astute social observations have your mind reeling as you take it all in: almost the reverse of the Cube- where all these whirling stories get jam packed into your own consciousness and change your perceptions of cultural trends afoot today. Like a novelist character in the novel who studies authenticity, you’re drawn into reflecting about the deep inauthenticity of our social media lives, the worrying merger of technology with our biological bodies, and what we sacrifice as we give up our privacy.

This book is sure to win upcoming literary awards, so don’t miss it!

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.

Did you like/love A Visit from the Goon Squad? You're going to like/love this. It's got the same kind of multi-faceted, connected short stories in different styles that tell a larger story thing going on, including with some visits to familiar names from _Goon Squad_, in a world where there's a technology where everyone's memories can be available via the cloud for everyone to access/see from your particular angle. What implications would that have? How would that affect the future?

There's a chapter told in tweet-like bites that does such a great mini bit of Black Mirror-style near future storytelling, and some final chapters that nicely tie a bow on what the book's trying to say. I think if you're not familiar with Egan's work, you're going to have a better time if you read A Visit from the Goon Squad first, but this doesn't completely throw you in the deep end. It's just a bunch of "oh, THAT person" easter eggs.

I was very excited to read Jennifer Egan’s new book The Candy House since I had heard great things about her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to my expectations.

The Candy House is described as a “novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.” The novel begins with the story of Bix Bouton who has an idea to create a device that allows people to record their memories and share them with others. Just as you think The Candy House will follow Bix on his quest to make his idea a reality, the novel takes you on a bizarre journey through the lives of many other characters. These characters’ lives and stories intersect with each other in various ways and during different decades.

Some of the stories were interesting and I like how Egan connected the characters to each other. I just didn’t think a lot of the characters’ stories really connected with this overall search for authenticity. Also some of the language related to the memory technology was hard to understand and purposely vague.

I will admit that Egan’s story continues to stick with me. I find myself thinking about it often and trying to piece the stories together.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for a #gifted advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.