The Candy House

As I read this, I couldn't decide whether I was willing to go along with the conceit or not. At moments I was hooked, at others I was almost annoyed. But eventually, I saw the book as a performance of a network of people and stories. In a way, it reminded me of what Bruno Latour says about writing (I think in Reassembling the Social, but I'm not 100% sure of that). I'm paraphrasing, but he suggests that a fair and accurate account of a network requires writing that is sort of like a network too, writing that resists the desire to fall into narrative. This book does some of that kind of work.

I also didn't realize it was a follow up/sequel of sorts, though you didn't need to read the first one to understand this one. I might go back to A Visit from The Goon Squad at some point.

Abandoned, p.57. Then again, p.162, and again p.200, and so on. Lost track of the number of times I abandoned it. Caught up on New Yorkers. Gazed at New Mexico skies. And each time, went back to reading, because so many people I respect & trust speak so highly of this book.

The gimmick was clever, and well done: each chapter is a completely different voice, tone, perspective, style; like it was a writing exercise. Okay, Egan is a talented writer. I’m impressed. If you appreciate fine writing, this is your thing.

It’s just not my thing. It might’ve been, if the story worked for me, but it didn’t. Far too much That’s-Not-How-It-Works, and too few relatable characters. I realize that wanting to care about characters is a defect in both my personality and intelligence; it is not a flaw I am able to fix. I also realize that my T-N-H-I-W quirk is inconsistent and even hypocritical, since I happily read about hyperintelligent spiders and TV-devouring Murderbots and magical unicorns. Why did I dwell on it so much in this book? Three aspects, I think.

First, that’s not how memory works. Seriously, this is kindergarten neuroscience. Memory is not a recorder, you can’t simply hoover up forgotten memories. The book gets this so fundamentally wrong, and it’s such an important part of the plot, that I could not suspend disbelief. (Also, human behavior and relationships are quantifiable—an important subplot—but not without involving astronomical, ridiculously-impossible numbers of variables.)

Second, okay, let’s pretend it were possible to upload memories to the cloud: who would do so? Who among us has no secrets? No truly private memories, fantasies, desires, misdeeds, embarrassments, or even quiet personal/ prides? Egan draws parallels to privacy loss in the social media age, trading your surf habits for free music, but that’s not even close to comparable.

Finally... fine, let’s go with it all. You can retrieve and net-share all your memories, and you do. Egan doesn't even follow through with the really interesting ramifications of such a development. Like, all the asymmetries! What do megacorporations and governments do with all that? How will it be used to further oppress disadvantaged peoples? How will banks authenticate now that the entire world knows your password, favorite pet’s name, and Dream Vacation? Everyone you meet, for the rest of your life, you now need to wonder: what do they know about me? And, beautiful people: even if they themselves haven’t uploaded their memories, some of their circle will have. Are there no stalkers in this world? What are the unexpected consequences? What are the right questions to ponder? That's what makes good SF.

On the positive side, though, we could learn what happened to our favorite Van Halen concert t-shirt. So it really is a difficult trade-off.

Bah. Enough. You get my point. But back to the characters: the vast majority were shallow, self-absorbed, banal. The penultimate chapter, that was good: depth, complexity. A few other snippets of light throughout the book: again, Egan is clearly very smart and compassionate, so I assume that she deliberately chose to write about vapid people. Which, again, is not my thing.

Jennifer Egan’s “The Candy House” straddles the line between magical realism and sci-fi—and I am here for it.

Anthropologist Miranda Kane’s 1995 book, “Patterns of Affinity” lays bare exacting formulas for predicting human behavior. She could never have anticipated Bix Bouton seizing on these ideas to expand his surveillance capitalism juggernaut: “Mandala” (the novel’s answer to Meta/Facebook).

Later, in 2010, while fretting about the future of Mandala, Bouton infiltrates a college discussion group of Kline’s work. There he learns of experiments to externalize people’s memories into machines.

Bix uses the research as the inspiration for “Own Your Unconscious”—a way to relive your past (including everything you’d forgotten).

Later, Mandala introduces “The Collective”—a pool of memories users can tap at the cost of releasing their memories for others. The collective is a database searchable by geolocation and time—enter the date and place and watch events unfold through the eyes of any user who’s uploaded their unconscious to the collective.

The novel is a collection of vignettes—memoirs of people connected to Bounton and Kline.

The world Egan builds is addictive and wonderous, but some stories fall flat. In particular, a second-person spy story that goes on way. too. long.

But the novel still has enough magnetic and beautiful moments to be worth your time.

The novel has 14 chapters each told by a different character. The characters are all related in some way to each other. The underlying plot premise is that some of the characters were involved in the creation of a product that lets you externalize and capture all of your memories. Some people choose to let their memories become part of a globally accessible database of memories, so that a subscriber can, for example, review an event in their life from the point of view of the memories of all the participants - living and dead. Some, initially eccentrics, choose to exclude themselves from the system. The analogy to the internet and social media is obvious. The different character’s stories explore various aspects of the author’s imagined consequences of such a monstrosity. It seemed to me that these explorations were overall a little superficial and that most of the novel concerns interpersonal relationships that were independent of the main plot premise. I didn't do it, but you might want to write down the relationships among these characters as you go, so when you get to the middle of the book you don't find yourself asking, "She is the friend of whose next door neighbor?" As in her previous A Visit from the Goon Squad, Ms. Egan has tried to achieve a sense of non-linear time by using both different narrators and different writing techniques, e.g. a series of e-mails or text messages, in each chapter. The novel bored me at times, perhaps because I’ve read A Visit from the Goon Squad and I’m so easily jaded. My favorite chapter is the last one about the memories of a little boy’s experience playing baseball. It makes a few different points in a subtle and moving way, and I think it shows what the rest of the novel could have been, but isn’t quite.

I liked the concept of uploading your memories to the internet, and having corporate incentives to share them. . However, this entire book felt like an introduction. New characters and new events, often in different time periods every chapter. They did become somewhat intertwined, but not in a way where I felt it all came together. At the end I didn't feel like I had any real sense of any of the characters or why they did the things they did. I also didn't find that it really stimulated my thinking at all about what a world where many uploaded their memories to the internet for all to see would be like. It was all just too disconnected. I have not read the first book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, where many of these characters were first introduced. Perhaps that would have helped, but I wouldn't recommend it as a stand alone.

 I haven't read [a:Jennifer Egan|49625|Jennifer Egan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1231143470p2/49625.jpg]'s [b:A Visit from the Goon Squad|7331435|A Visit from the Goon Squad|Jennifer Egan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1356844046l/7331435.SX50.jpg|8975330], which [b:The Candy House|58437521|The Candy House|Jennifer Egan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642351487l/58437521.SY75.jpg|86707532] is said to be a sort of companion to. If I had, I might have had a better idea of what's going on, though I've read that's not true. More likely, I'd have gotten more out of The Candy House if I were thirty years younger.
 It's a fascinating book and I'm glad I read it, but there were long passages that, while interesting on their own, I couldn't see how they were connected. This is especially true of a chapter of messages among several people concerning the possible making of a documentary about an actor's love of speed boats.
 Egan strikes me as someone who's smart and creative as hell. I picture her going through her day always with access to a notebook or, given the times, her phone, and noting ideas and perceptions she has as her day progresses. She probably has ten great ideas a day and the best one or two of them make it into her prose. The result is fascinating reading she well deserves her Pulitzer Prize for.
 The Candy House is like an ensemble TV series, with many characters in the center at different times, few of them chronological. As much as I liked that, I sort of miss novels with one or two strong central characters. I also think Egan got so wound up in the multiple stories she was telling that she didn't go into race and gender issues as much as the book's beginning made me think she would.

All our lives, we had needed our mother; now our father needed us.

I think I enjoyed The Candy House, and while I searched for reasons for say otherwise I only came back with comments that would support the book more. The Glass House was a unique and enjoyable read that sits at a comfortable 3/5.

I started The Candy House with no context. Perhaps the cover stood out or it was listed on a Goodreads list, whatever reason, it was added to my queue and I did no research before I dove in.

A gain is a loss when it comes to technology

The story is written from different perspectives and for half the book I was waiting for something to happen when the story would click. The only constant in The Glass House is the consequences, good and bad, of technology. Some characters portray this world with Bix Bouton and the Mandala technologies as idyllic, and others do everything in their power to avoid the crushing prevalence of the technology and its uses and The Glass House explores all facets.

Social media was dead, everyone agreed; self-representations were inherently narcissistic or propaganda or both, and grossly inauthentic.

The Glass House is a cautionary tale of life with advanced technology connected in and with every aspect of our life. The similarities for our current reliance on social media and promotion of virtual reality don't make it a far leap to think it could happen.

At times the story would venture in to Black Mirror territory and others made me wonder why such technology or algorithms haven't been created yet. The book raised plenty of thought provoking questions and took time to explore lives and generations affected by technology.

I realized that the person Damon had reminded me of was myself: another white male who'd managed to blow through countless advantages and opportunities and fail catastrophically.

The POV's were constantly changing and while it took about 40% of the book to start connecting the dots and understand the so what each chapter and character was essential for building the story. I struggled with scope of characters and did not have a chance to commit to memory which families had the black sheep, which one was divorced, which child was the favourite, and on and on. There were almost too many POV changes.

This resulted in some chapters with me not realizing which character chapter I was reading (and at times this reveal was intentionally withheld) and other times not appreciating the POV chapter because I couldn't remember where they fit in the larger story. Because of the scale of POV's there were some more enjoyable arcs than others.

What pained Gregory was the thought of a dying man trying to repair, and atone for, a world he had inadvertently wrought

The Glass House could be an anthology and each POV and warning are designed by a different artist. The connection isn't immediately visible until you ride a sunrise balloon and look down on the art project in the desert and realize the larger objective and how it all fits together.

As A Visit to the Goon Squad illustrated, our culture changes constantly, and it doesn’t take long for anyone to look around and think–how did we get here? Computers in our pockets are now a given. Social media has made it possible to communicate with millions of people, all at once, in seconds. We can now look up any information that comes to mind–except our own memories. But wait, what if a technology existed that allowed us to transfer all the memories in our minds to a device that showed us our lives, like a movie? The price? We’d have to share our memories to a collective. One more invasion of privacy.

Bix Bouton, of Mandala fame, has a new idea: Own Your Unconscious ™ . Many people will find this fascinating, then tempting. . Eventually, most people will happily accept this and their memories will become part of the collective.

Jennifer Egan creates a world in which we the people have been so minutely studied that there are algorithms that can predict our actions and reactions with very close accuracy. Even conversations are broken down to algebraic codes. And there are people who are employed to perfect the system–and then, there are eluders, or people who view Own Your Unconscious as a very bad idea for everyone.

Indeed, it becomes challenging to feel and express authentic feelings and thoughts. But people all have a need to do just that, and have a variety of ways of hearing their own voices over the den. There are enough characters in this novel to be challenging, as their stories scatter and converge over decades. This story is populated with souls I found to be likable, their stories compelling. There are too many wonderful plots to begin to discuss in a review. This book is pure genius, which may be what one character in the story called a “word-casing,” but it is an authentic thought, nonetheless!

Thank you to Scribner and Netgalley for the opportunity to review this superb novel.

I still want to know what was in that suitcase...