This is “sibling sequel” to A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011 Pulitzer Prize), which I have not read ... yet. The author has said, “The Candy House follows a number of its peripheral characters into their own futures and pasts to create an independent work with a new set of preoccupations and center of gravity.” In reading, I did not feel disadvantaged by a lack of background.

The driving factor in The Candy House is the invention of a device that can allow people to digitize, store, and share their consciousness. Think of it as social media on steroids. There is an extended cast of characters that we meet at different points in their lives. (I really should have used a notebook to keep track, although there was joy in suddenly realizing “Oh, that is the daughter who ...”)

The title comes from this sentence, “Never trust a candy house. It was only a matter of time before someone made them pay for what they thought they were getting for free.” We all know that Facebook is “free”, but there certainly is a price.

If you wish to read a novel that follows “The Rules”, this is not it. At all. There is a chapter consisting entirely of text messages. There is not a fixed chronology. The focus swings to something new and then swings back. It is all, however, wonderfully written and fully engaging. Portions are laugh-out-loud funny. And the characters are so very real that we all know some version of “that person”.

Dazzling. Purely in terms of technique, Jennifer Egan blew me away with the range and sheer inventiveness of her characters, scenarios and range of styles. Fluid, rich, surprising - this is simply writing to relish, to swim in like an endless warm sea. Did I keep up with the tangle of character connections, the switches of time and the AI stuff? No. Could be my fault for reading it in 40 minute chunks, or my aging brain. Or it could just be too complicated. But it didn’t matter. I loved it.

I was a huge fan of A Visit from the Goon Squad, but it was published in 2010, and I personally finished it in 2018. If I had know that The Candy House was truly a sequel and used many of the same characters, I would have re-read Goon Squad first.

Unfortunately, I didn't.

And since I was reading an ARC, I didn't even have Kindle's handy dandy X-ray to help me keep track of the myriad of characters.

All that being said, I still love Egan's writing style and creative mind. Each chapter does have the feeling of a stand alone short story, which is a format I really enjoy. But in this book, I was distracted with thoughts of, "Wait, have I met this character earlier? How is he/she related to these other characters? Is that even important?"

So, my recommendation to other readers is re-read Goon Squad and read the books back to back if you really want to get the most out of The Candy House.

I will probably buy this book after it is released (and X-ray is available), and read both books in a row . . .I felt like I missed out on the best of a writer I truly admire.

The Candy House is structures just as "A Visit from the Goon Squad" was. each chapter is deftly and uniquely written. I fell deeply into each one. In fact, it has some of the same characters, though my memory wasn't able to inform me if this was a sequel or prequel or concurrent stories.

I was brought in and interested in each chapter/voice on their own. However as a whole, cohesive novel, I found it hard to care or follow the main story. It diverted from the book description, in a way that I didn't love, even as I enjoyed reading the individual chapters very much. It felt like a story collection of intertwined lives, rather than a novel. Come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure it's even marketed as a novel. If you liked "Goon Squad," which many people did, this will be another big hit for Egan.

The Candy House is an imaginative and very different book that has you probe questions about technology and privacy. The premise is saving your memories in a community where everyone has access to various individuals memories of the same events. She explores the techie side with the 'counters' who need to garner community users. She also discusses the feared death of the music industry with the advent of Napster. May of the characters from Goon Squad are featured. Her writing is nuanced and complex and her themes are spot on for current day. It's one thing to have a community providing book reviews but another to have a community that shares memories of the same event. You may find out things your really wished you didn't.

While I was completely captivated with Goon Squad, Candy House did not feel as accessible. It didn't really hold my attention. I do love Jennifer Egan and will look forward to future works.

The Candy House is a clever, funny, and ultimately incredibly written sequel to A Visit From The Goon Squad. There is a large cast of characters, but I had no problem differentiating between them as the characters are so well-defined. However, I did have trouble remembering how each character was related as I was approaching the end of the novel. Also, the ending wasn't as satisfying as I hoped it would be. The idea that books are better at provoking empathy than a machine that would allow you to experience someone else's memories is interesting, but is presented in a didactic way at the end. I wish this idea was presented earlier on.

This is the first book I've read by this author and I really enjoyed it. The story was thought-provoking and the writing lovely and spare. This is not an easy read by any stretch—there are a great many characters and story lines to keep track of—but it's well worth the effort. Highly recommend.

Like her earlier work, the book is fantastic but all over the place. It was hard for me to fully grasp because I would read a little on my lunch or break, and I feel that it deserved to be read not in a few pages here and there, where I could focus more.

You and I may choose not to ponder too deeply the consequences of posting photos to Facebook and hot takes on Twitter. We upload videos of our kids to YouTube and deem some (but only some!) vacation pictures worthy of Instagram. Jennifer Egan has considered the implications of all this sharing for years, and it shows in her latest novel, "The Candy House." Social media does give us something (connections? attention? escape?) but all these platforms are taking something from us, too. This novel invites you to consider what's private, what should be private and what can never be private. Along the way, readers encounter Eagan's vision of a near-future not-quite-total-dystopia in which we all upload and catalog *all* of our memories online. She revisits some of the characters who appeared in "A Visit from the Goon Squad," her Pulitzer-winning 2010 novel, but you don't have to read that first to understand what's happening here. Egan has established herself as one of our most skillful contemporary novelists. "A Visit from the Goon Squad" is inventive and entirely different from the book she wrote next, "Manhattan Beach," a work of historical fiction. I stand in awe of her talent and will be eager to read whatever she cares to write after this!

The Candy House is well-written, contemplative, ambitious, and creative.

It is about a technology “Own Your Unconsciousness” which allows users to access any memory they’ve ever had. If they decide to share those memory, they get access to other people’s memories as well. Personally, I think this sounds horrifying but it does make for a great premise.

Reading this novel requires a lot of attention, as there are a ton of characters, and their connections with each other are not always made explicit by the author. There are also time jumps throughout.

While I appreciate the concept of The Candy House, I found some sections much more compelling than others. The story is divided into four main parts: “Build”, “Break”, “Drop”, “Build”. I was most engaged during in the second half of the first “Build”, which was propulsive and interesting. Throughout my read, I found myself spending more time trying to figure out who the characters are and how they are connected than on enjoying the storyline.

Though I did not enjoy it as much as I had anticipated, I do recommend this to readers in the mood for an intellectual read and provocative look at how technology shapes, destroys, and connects our lives.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this ARC.

I didn't realize this was a second book in a series but that didn't matter - it was so good. Each chapters are unique and the characters all fit together in unique and complex ways. I liked the format and stories of some characters and chapters more than others but overall really enjoyed it. It would have helped for some of the terms like "counters" and "elders" to have been defined earlier on as well.

DNF'd this book at 50%. It's possibly been too long since I read A Visit From the Good Squad for me to really enjoy this one, but it was simply too complex for me currently. I could see myself revisiting the novel at a different time though! I'd still give what I did read at least 3 stars. Jennifer Egan is incredibly talented.

I personally did not enjoy the book and was dragging to finish. This book was all short stories coming together in different ways. I have to admit the story line was very complex and connecting the stories together was like a puzzle I needed to put together which I didn’t mind but felt very long. The email chains were really long as well and I wanted to stop reading after a while, I just couldn’t get into the book at all. I did laugh a few times but I though it was too much going on at once.

Thank you @netgalley for the ARC.

Underlying theme re social media was well done, but overall- not enough character development and story line too choppy for me.

This was well-written written, it just wasn't for me. I didn't like or care about any of the characters and I thought that the story was boring and hard to follow. I didn't realize it was technically a sequal.. Maybe if I read the first book, I would have liked this more. Or, at least, I would've known better than to read it.

About connection with other people, and how memories can be so different person to person. Not just the perception of what happened: I love how she described memories as math, as images, as feelings. An intuitive, clever, provocative book.

Billed as Goon Squad #2 and featuring some of the characters [Bennie Salazar and Sasha] from her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad--which I didn't love--I much preferred Look At Me], I was still eager to read this book.

It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the book. And when I did, it never lasted for long because it would switch off. I found it quite disjointed.

The book starts with Bix Bouton and his son Gregory; and ends with same. In fact, there are several instances where the book circles and closes a loop.

Bix is a tech entrepreneur whose "Own Your Unconscious" helps users access their memories and exchange/share others. This is a thread throughout.

The book features both sections with short telegraphic sentences and others with looong run-on sentences. Voices: first, second, and third person. Emails. So, an abundance of riches? Or not.

Least favorite parts: Lulu the spy 2032 [I tend not to like futuristic novels, so...] and See Below.

But some of the language is beautiful. A few descriptions that I loved:

"razor of cold in the breeze"

"...occasional word he did utter had the cleaving finality of an ax splitting a log."

"Jack's face underwent an evolution of expression..."

"...fragile embrace mentholated by the cigarettes she still smoked..."

There is the music industry, tech/digital age. And math and science. And anthropology. Again, a mish mash.

Too many characters and shifts; people pop up all over [to wit, Miranda Kline--who I found interesting, but...] No connection with any of the characters.

3.5 but can't round up because sadly didn't feel the love.

This book was just TOO MUCH of everything. I had not read Good Squad and didn't know what to expect. I loved the first few chapters which were wonderfully "wordy", but then the format changed numerous times, and the characters morphed in and out of time. It was hard for me to keep up with which characters were related, and how they were related. The chapter with the back and forth text messages was the one that just pushed me over the edge - not enough and too much at the same time.

Jennifer Egan has a gift for a unique, intellectual writing style, and I recognize that. I think the problem with my not really getting into this story was with me, as a more casual reader.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review The Candy House.

This was a SOLID 4.5 for me, for sure.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

So, I found Jennifer Egan with Goon Squad, and fell in love with her diverse storytelling methods, and how she used them to dance around the story... telling it obliquely rather than thru narrative.

What she started in that, she continued in Candy House. With a variety of storytelling methods (including a phenomenally crafted email/text chain) she really shows her strength in storytelling thru character development.

Ultimately a story about communication, Egan breaks down family dynamics, difficult personalities, how people become who they are and how even the fate of nations can be determined years before at a country club. I really enjoyed this novel, and hope you do, too!

tysm to netgalley, and scribner for this advance copy.

i tore through this book. ever since it was announced, i have been eagerly awaiting its release, and i was not disappointed.

i don't read a lot of series or sequels, so this felt incredibly special. long awaited, if you will. if you liked the first, i feel fairly certain you will enjoy this. i’m a huge sucker for interwoven characters and books that play with a little genre. this book manages to pull in all the characters from the first and to build on the world in an incredibly satisfying way that explores social media and mass consciousness and the internet in ways that feel prescient and of this moment.

i couldn’t put it down. REAL fun. what a tiny joy to enjoy a book so much.