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.

📚 #BOOKREVIEW 📚
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan ⭐️⭐️⭐️ / Pages: 352 / Genre: Fiction

I liked the premise of this book, which centers around a company that can save your memories so you can access them whenever you want to relive them as well as share them with others. The people who developed this technology involves a huge blended family with several half siblings plus another family with four siblings. Each person gets their own story which is woven in with the other stories. In the end it was very confusing and it would’ve helped if they included a family tree so it would be easier to follow. This would make for a good movie or tv series where a skilled editor can help frame this into an easier to follow story.

I give it a 4 stars for characters and stories, but 2 stars for structure, followability, and frustration. So three stars total.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan is a companion novel to A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010). This book stands alone, however. It deals with themes of mortality and morality in it's interconnected stories. The author's ability to create compelling stories from various points of view and various styles of expression is impressive, and keeps the reader wondering what is around the next corner. Recommended for fans of David Mitchell.

The Candy House reads like a series of short stories, written by different authors, that slowly weave together the concept of how involved should technology be in our every day lives? If someone was to upload their own memories to share with others, do the other people in that memory lose their privacy? No one particular technology is called out by name but it's clear who is being referenced. For those readers who grew up pre-Internet, this novel will be a good reminder how much social media has entrenched into our daily lives. Could you imagine explaining Facebook and Instagram to someone in the 1980's? The thought of someone seeing our parents dorky vacation photos would have been mortifying. Now it's a need to be seen. Daily.

The concept of technology and privacy is timely, and the book is a worthy read even if it does bog down a bit.

Jennifer Eagan is one of a kind. Candy house was a most complicated story-I wished I had kept track of the characters at the beginning.. Going back and forth in time and connections to each other was an interesting twist. Bix is an incredible tech person and he launches an app that will save your memories and distribute them. A real commentary on today's social media platforms.

Great fiction is born not just of the story itself, but the manner in which the story is told. It sounds simple, but from simplicity springs truth.

Narratives that are built around a central conceit while spinning out multiple perspectives, for instance – tricky business. When done well, they can result in absolutely mesmerizing literature. When done poorly, well … we’ve all seen what happens when the spinning plates begin to tumble from their poles.

Jennifer Egan’s new novel “The Candy House” very much occupies the former space, a hypnotic decades-spanning tale reflecting the juxtaposed light-and-dark possibilities looming in our very near future. There is no crashing literary dishware here. Instead, we get a sweeping epic rooted in the potential (and potential ramifications) that comes with the logical endstages of our societal tendency toward the sharing of experience and memory.

All of it, by the way, conveyed through a series of interconnected stylistically diverse vignettes that run the gamut – some are more traditional narrative constructions, while others veer into the abstract and/or absurd. We have email exchanges and second-person instructions, stories of tech billionaires and music producers and unsettled housewives, with the overarching tale playing out over multiple generations and venturing from our more-or-less present into an all-to-plausible future.

Attempting to condense the plot of “The Candy House” into a short synopsis is a fool’s errand; this narrative is too wide-ranging and thrillingly weird to lend itself to such an exercise. However, the central conceit from which our story spins out is this: a brilliant man named Bix Bouton and his company, the aptly-named Mandala, creates the next step in social media, the ability to upload and externalize our memories. From there, we get something known as “Own Your Unconscious,” which allows every single one of your memories to be easily and instantly accessed … and lets you share those same memories to a collective, which in turn grants you access to all the memories of anyone else who has engaged with the collective.

From that central event, “The Candy House” spirals rapidly outward in what feels like barely-controlled chaos. We bear witness as the consequences spread, through secondary, tertiary and quaternary connections. So many people – families and friends and more – impacted by what is discovered in the shadows of memory shared by the masses … and perhaps even more deeply impacted by those memories that have not been shared.

Ultimately, this is not a book reliant on plot – though the story Egan has crafted is plenty compelling, make no mistake – but rather about the in-the-moment reading experience. As we are pulled through the varying perspectives, with the connections – some overt, others subtle – playing out contextually, we’re steadily eased into the rich depths of the world that has been built for us. We come to exist in this place, a place that is different from where we are, but not so different that we’re unable to conceive of the path from here to there.

The moral and ethical ramifications of technology-as-connective-tissue are all over this book; even as we see the many benefits that come with the logical endgame of social media “sharing,” we’re also confronted with the potential downsides that – in theory – far outweigh any of the positives that might be derived from such a world. Striking the balance between respect for and distrust of technology is difficult – we need it, even if we don’t want to need it – but Egan does it with seeming effortlessness, even as she continually asks tough questions.

In this crazy-quilt patchwork, we’re left to live within the parameters of the experiences of the extensive dramatis personae. There’s something truly remarkable about it all; while one might have moved across immense distances in both time and space in the matter of just a few chapters, the line connecting the book’s beginning and end remains unbroken.

The comparison has been made to electronic dance music; indeed, there’s a build-break-drop delineation specifically at work here. It makes sense – there’s a pulsating rhythm at the heart of this novel, an enigmatic thumping that raises the heartrate and sends endorphins shooting through the synapses. There’s no disputing the musical influences at work here, both structurally and stylistically.

Egan is unafraid to challenge the reader, trusting that we will be willing and able to go along for the ride. There’s something deeply satisfying about that trust; it allows us to fully invest ourselves in the experience. It’s rare to feel like you’re operating in tandem with a writer, but Egan seems to be inviting us to collaborate – in “The Candy House,” the writing and the reading go hand in hand in a way we don’t often experience.

It's rare to realize in the moment that you’re reading a book that you’ll never forget. But that’s what it was like, working my way through “The Candy House.” The combination of story and storytelling is something that feels both foreign and familiar, an evolution of sorts. Egan doesn’t make it easy on the reader, but that’s by design – and it is undeniably worth the effort.

What would you do if you could upload all your memories and they were part of a global collective for all to share? Intricately plotted, Egan explores the pros and cons of such a scenario with the beloved characters from A Visit From the Goon Squad along with their next generation. Bittersweet and moving, The Candy House is filled with likeable and quirky characters wrestling with complex decisions giving the reader and unforgettable experience.

"The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan is the kind of book I love reading--smart, inventive, challenging; it's a kaleidoscope of characters, eras, settings and events that with every chapter swirls into a fascinating and colorful new focus. I don't want to give too much away here--the fun of "The Candy House" is in watching Egan snap all the pieces of her mosaic narrative into place. But it's important to note that it's absolutely not necessary to have read :"A Visit From The Goon Squad" to thoroughly enjoy "Candy House" (although I for one will be heading to read that earlier book very soon). It's only April, but I know that "Candy House" will make my list of the top 5 books I read in 2022. Can't wait to see where Jennifer Egan takes her prodigious talent next. Highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review. Loved every minute!

I loved Manhattan Beach so much that I keep giving this author more chances. The Goon Squad was so so. I wanted to like this book but it felt too experimental to me. I may give her another chance because the writing is done well.

This is Jennifer Egan’s long-awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize winning “A Visit from the Goon Squad”. But as she wrote that 12 years ago, and published Manhattan Beach in between with no inkling she was working on a sequel, perhaps “long-awaited” is inaccurate. I was blown away by the creativity and rich, complex characters of the first book - probably one of my favorites of all time. Those chapters read as short stories, albeit with interconnected characters. You saw different points of view, not of the same events, but of their lives, creating a mosaic. Reading about a new character and realizing it was the same person mentioned in a previous chapter but now seen years on felt akin to spotting “Easter eggs” in movies - a surprising and delightful treat.

“The Candy House” delivers more of the same experimental fiction and introduction of a motley crew of characters tied to each other in some way, and to the chief characters of the preceding sister novel. Much has been written about the all-PowerPoint chapter of Goon Squad; here there is a chapter entirely made up twitter-verse speak. It is actually a funny, at-times searing unfolding of a modern day female Mata Hari at work (and one of the new central characters in The Candy House), but each episode was actually published as a Twitter entry in 2012 by the author, and later compiled and published as a short story called “Black Box”. Here, she includes it in her new novel as Lulu the Spy, and retrofits the storyline to include this absolutely brilliant chapter.

This, and other elements of the story like the epistolary chapter involving at least 20 characters communicating by email, to me was like consuming the most delicious meal. You never want it to end!

If this is not a ringing endorsement of this book, I don’t know what is. I do realize that experimental fiction is not for everyone and this book is challenging. If you’re looking for something enjoyable but a bit mindless, this is not that book. If you want a provocative reading experience that will stay with you for years to come - regardless of whether you enjoyed it or not - check out The Candy House.

The Candy House is more like a House of Mirrors, with many facets, reflections, smooth surfaces and images that reveal and distort. Jennifer Egan's latest creation is no confection, however; with its unconscious-owning counters, eluders, and techno-freaks, this is a vision of technology run rampant. Complex, you bet! The Candy House makes its prequel, The Goon Squad, seem like the Cat in the Hat by comparison. I can't say I liked what I read -- that is to say, the vision she offers is kind of disturbing and repellent. Warning to those who jump into this one after her most recent: this is no walk along Manhattan Beach; it's more like battling furiously against a riptide of roboticism. Wake up, we're drowning!

The Candy House, the latest novel by acclaimed author Jennifer Egan, will definitely not be going on my top ten list of favorite 2022 books. Maybe not even on my top 25. Nevertheless, this much anticipated follow-up to Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, will definitely please many readers. Her followers will, no doubt, be thrilled with her recent work, however this reader, not being well-versed in her style, was left bewildered and less entertained than I was hoping. As always, I am grateful for the opportunity to have read this advanced copy and wish Ms. Egan much success.

In the near future, we can all externalize our unconsciousness and store it in a cube, retrieving all our memories/life experiences from our brain only to watch them again. Naturally, people decide to turn this into a collective consciousness, allowing anyone to watch, say, hundreds of individual experiences of a concert from 1965. And woven throughout The Candy House is an amazing array of characters who in some way are connected to Bix who figured out this thing that changes the culture quickly, dramatically and forever. This book is a kaleidoscope of people and experiences, families, the music industry, a band everyone knew made famous by a mentally ill ex-military author who's sister's ex was one of the folks who spent his life counteracting the intrusion of the own your unconscious and their family took care of Lulu while her mother was in prison and she somehow is aware she has a famous father but her mother won't tell her who. Lulu's story is my favorite, weaving through the book, pure and yet traumatized, apparently repeatedly but in one part of her life she engages in public service that is captured in my favorite chapters that turned out to be a former New Yorker story -- figures. Meanwhile, Bix got his idea when he read Miranda Kline's book about a Brazilian indigenous people so divorced from the rest of the world that she can study their contained social structure to develop an algorithm and write her book "Patterns of Affinity" that led to the success of all social platforms. And Miranda was once married to Lou, a record producer who had two children with each of his three wives. Don't get me started on Lou's kids or Lou or his wives... I would love to understand, by the way, how Jennifer Egan's brain works because while I find her writing and her story and her characters amazing I can't imagine being a person who could put this book and all its story lines together. It is the journey of The Candy House, strung together with these interconnecting people at various times that makes the book, which is certainly not plot driven or chronological but makes so much sense and gives one far too much to chew on. I think.... I'll read it again.