The Candy House

Starred review from January 17, 2022
Egan returns to the fertile territory and characters of A Visit from the Goon Squad with an electrifying and shape-shifting story that one-ups its Pulitzer-winning predecessor. I’ll see your PowerPoint chapter, Egan seems to say, and raise you a chapter in tweets, and another in emails and texts. In the near future, a platform called Own Your Unconscious allows memories to be uploaded to the cloud and accessed by anyone. “Counters” seek to ferret out “proxies” that help hide “eluders” who resist merging their “gray grabs” to the collective in order to leave their online personae behind. Not everyone sees this as panacea, and a countermovement called Mondrian arises. Appearances from music producer Bennie Salazar, his mentor Lou Kline, and their lovers and children provide sharp pleasures for Goon Squad fans, and Egan cleverly echoes the ambitious, savvy marketing schemes of real-world tech barons with Own Your Unconscious. It casts its spell on Bennie, whose punk rock days with the Flaming Dildos are long past: “Tongue-in-cheek nostalgia is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will, through which we hope to lure in a new generation and bewitch them,” he writes in an email. Twisting through myriad points of view, narrative styles, and divergent voices, Egan proves herself as perceptive an interpreter of the necessity of human connection as ever, and her vision is as irresistible as the tech she describes. This is Egan’s best yet. Agent: Binky Urban, ICM Partners.

June 1, 2022

In 2010, Bix Bouton's tech company is successful, but he is reaching middle age and becoming restless. Then he stumbles onto a new idea for a technology that helps someone download their memory so anyone can experience it. Told through several interconnected stories, what follows is a story about how downloading memories affects everyone, even those who wish not to participate. Utilizing a full cast of narrators, this is an ambitious work that explores what it means to be human, what reality is (or is not), the danger of technology, and the way in which all of our lives intersect. Ranging from the traditional short story format to the epistolary style, the audiobook shows off Egan's talent as a writer and her ability to create a unique listen. VERDICT This companion novel to Egan's Pulitzer Prize--winning A Visit From the Goon Squad can be read as a stand-alone and will appeal to readers who like epic futuristic literature.--Elyssa Everling

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