Review: The Candy House

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Candy House, Jennifer Egan, 2022

The novel is a sequel of sorts to the 2011 Pulitzer prize-winning "A Visit from the Goon Squad." While it's not necessary to have read the former to understand the latter, there may be some benefit in doing so if you want a fuller set of details for some of the characters appearing later in the book.

It's hard to describe this book as a whole other than a collection of loosely connected short stories centering around a Black-Mirror-ish world where human memories are recorded and, at times, reviewed. "Own Your Consciousness" is a technology that allows people to upload a life's worth of memories — even long-forgotten ones — share them in a collective archive and access others'.-- kind of like all the social media apps integrated into one and pumped up on super steroids.

There are so many characters that it may have made sense to take notes to make it easier to see the connections to the other stories in the book. Some characters were exciting and memorable, while others were forgettable. The same applies to the set of stories-- in fact, it may be better to describe them as vignettes were it not for the fact there were time jumps, location jumps, and sometimes both.

I dare hazard that I understand what the author is trying to do as a whole with the book, but the moirée of stories was just too jarring going from one to the next. Don't get me wrong, the book was written well and a pleasure to read, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if the stories weren't so seemingly disconnected by the order in which they were placed.

Lulu, the spy, was my favorite story, followed by the story of the heroin-addicted woman.

I rate the book 3.25 out of 5 stars.

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