Author Jennifer Egan takes the world of "Return of the Goon Squad" and takes us forward, and sometimes backwards, in an engaging narrative that interweaves the lives of characters across generations. At the center of the plot is a technological breakthrough that allows anyone to add memories to the Collective Consciousness, allowing anyone to access old memories,even not their own. Each narrative has its own plot, and while there's not an overarching plot that comes together at the end, The absence of an bigger plot does not take away from the enjoyment of reading this book, it's a great read.

Critics smarter than me will say things like this book is a ‘searing critique of the intersection between technology and humanity.’ That is probably a correct assessment. But this book’s message felt lofty and just out of reach to me. Egan is an excellent writer and I enjoyed some of the narratives almost as short stories, but overall, it was a little out there for me.

The audiobook was read by a full cast which is always a pleasure to listen to. I noticed in the digital copy that some chapters have different typography (a list of instructions, a series of email/text exchanges) that may have been easier to parse by reading vs. listening. This is a high-concept book and it won’t be for everyone. In fact, I don’t think it was for me! But it’s the kind of book that wins awards and will probably be on the ‘best of’ lists.

Thank you to @simon.audio and @Netgalley for this review copy. The opinions are my own.

I vaguely remember A Visit from the Goon Squad from a decade ago, but I knew I wanted to read The Candy House a loose sequel. As with Goon Squad there are many characters to keep track of in The Candy House. They are all loosely tied together through out their stories.

In The Candy House Bix Bouton has created new tech that allows people to upload all their memories. Own Your Unconscious can be just for you or you can share it with everyone creating a Collective Conscious. So Facebook, but on steroids. Can you imagine letting people view your most intimate memories? This would not be for me. Anyway, of course some people embrace this tech and others think it's terrible.

The book starts with Bix Bouton as he's suffering with insomnia and wandering the streets of NYC. He misses the days of his youth where people would talk about ideas and philosophize for hours. I can relate to that being in my mid forties now. I love hearing my daughter and her friends talk about life, love, politics, etc as they are forming their views. But as full adults we no longer do these things with our friends. On one of Bix's late night wanderings he finds a flyer about a group of grad school students meeting to discuss a lecture from someone he used to know. The someone being the woman whose work inspired his social media platform. With all of this knowledge he knows he can get into the group discussion without attending the lecture. The conversation that ensues is what leads to Own Your Conscious.

The next few stories are related to this new tech and engaging. From there the book goes off the rails for me. I could not keep track of how characters knew each other and it seemed to have left the main idea of Bouton's business. I enjoyed the first half of the book, but the last half was hard to slog through at times.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I loved Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, although now, nearly 12 years later, I didn’t remember much about the book. Maybe I should have reread it before reading the sequel, The Candy House, but instead I read it much like a stand-alone book. Maybe that’s why I had trouble connecting with it.

Both books are written in a similar fashion, as a series of interconnecting short stories that trace characters over years and go from the past to the near future. The Candy House is built around the idea that a way to upload our memories into a “Collective Consciousness” has been invented and people will now be able to access everyone’s memories. There are upsides to this – improved crime solving, and people can store their memories and upload them in the case of brain injury.

The title refers to the house of sweets in Hansel and Gretel and the idea that what is most tempting comes at a hidden cost. Throughout this book, Egan explores what privacy and identity mean in a world where everyone shares their most intimate thoughts. There are plenty of parallels with our current social media-driven, no-privacy world. The young accept it without question, while those of us who are older try (and mostly fail) to hide from it. One character replays one of her father’s memories and is devastated by his views of what she thought was a cherished childhood moment. But for the most part the Collective is in the background. I would think that actually sharing our memories into a searchable internet collective would be catastrophic in a lot of ways, but Egan instead delves into the more subtle consequences like the search for authenticity, the difficulty of independent thought, and the struggle to filter vast quantities of information into something meaningful.

But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it’s all just information.

Jennifer Egan, The Candy House
It’s an ambitious book, and one that would probably improve if I’d read it with much greater attention. But I struggled to connect with the characters in the way I did with Goon Squad. I’ve come to like the format of interconnected short stories (like the novels of Elizabeth Strout) because they let you see characters from different perspectives and I enjoy seeing how one character/story connects to the next. The downside, though, is that the reader jumps from character to character before getting to know any of them well. In this book I rarely felt I got to know any of the characters enough to be really interested, and the next stories didn’t go back to those characters enough for me to feel like it was one overarching story. I found myself really interested in a few of the characters, more early in the book than later (Bix, Lincoln, and Molly, for example), but then I wanted more about them and instead the book veered into completely different storylines.

If you loved Goon Squad, you might want to reread that before you dive into this one. Egan returns to the stories of characters Sasha, Bennie Salazar, and Lou Kline, and their families and friends. In my review of Goon Squad I wrote about how much I felt for Sasha’s struggles, and I wish I had felt more in this book.

In the end, while I loved Goon Squad, I can’t say I enjoyed this one. I didn’t like most of the characters, and it felt like a lot of ideas were thrown at me without building a real human connection. Arguably, that is exactly the point of this book, since that is what we’re experiencing every day, and many of us long to turn it all off and go back to meaningful, simple, human connection. This was a very thoughtful, very complicated book – but it felt too “meta” for me. It’s a book about ideas, not a book that felt like it was about real people.

Maybe, if I reread Goon Squad, I would feel similarly. I know that book didn’t work for a lot of people, but it resonated with me. Maybe it’s a change in my own reading tastes – certainly books read differently at different ages. If you’ve read both, what did you think?

Note: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from NetGalley and publisher Scribner. This book published April 5, 2022.

Whoa. You have to know A LOT about a lot to really understand this book. Even if you don't know much about technology (gaming, portals), you can enjoy this book because it's Jennifer Egan, and I bet you loved A Visit from the Goon Squad like I did. I was worried that since it's been so long since I read AVFTGS, I wouldn't be able to follow this companion book, but honestly, it doesn't matter much. Does it enhance your reading if you have read AVFTGS? Absolutely. But even if you don't know the characters from before, can you still appreciate the gorgeous way Egan examines memory and authenticity in this book? Yes. This book really is about examining what makes us tick, and what makes us care about each other. I love that Egan is even trying to do this in this futuristic/dystopic/technological way. I am having a very hard time explaining this book, but that's because there's no precedent. You should read it for yourself, and you won't regret it.

The Candy House is another mind-altering reading experience from the author of A Visit From the Goon Squad.

An businessman/inventor offers a way to store your experiences including what everyone surrounding you felt about it (as long as you share your memories for all the world to see). It is a natural extension to our current social media experience. However, the book is written in short tales of different people’s experiences with the technology.

I think it would have been helpful to use some type of mind cloud program to keep all the characters and timelines straight. It took me almost half the book to see how some of the stories related to each other. Some never fit into the picture in my head. Is this a negative? Yes and no. Don’t read this book to relax before bed. Don’t try and read it in one sitting. It is more of a completive experience. Take it slow (and maybe take some notes). If you do, you will be rewarded with a completely different type of novel.

While this is labeled as a sequel to A Visit From the Goon Squad, it works fine as a standalone. Overall, The Candy House is an intelligent and innovative book that would be perfect for book club discussions. 5 stars!

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

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.

This might be difficult to describe but this is more like an eclectic collection of short stories with a theme. Everything centers around the shared consciousness, Own Your Unconscious.

This book is provocative and is definitely sending a message to us on what is the good, bad and evil in our world centered around friends we’ve never met and if it is altering how we think and live.

I went back and forth from the audio to the print and while the book at times seemed chaotic to me, it did all fit together after the halfway point. It is definitely like nothing you’ve read and while I don’t normally read short stories, I like how these were tied together,

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.