Jennifer Egan is one of the most talented writers alive, that much is clear (and I'd be hard-pressed to find better). A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010) was a revelation of meta-modernism (and sincerity!) that deserves its own eventual post.

The semi-sequel to Goon Squad, with many characters returning, is Candy House, one of my favorite works I've read in the last few years.

The scope is just extraordinary.

It’s main premise introduces a new piece of tech from a company called ‘Mandala’ which allows users to upload the entirety of their memories. It whips back and forth through decades, with academics, spies, gamers, artists, and kids serving as Egan's guinea pigs through a technological stampede. Every story is interconnected, a point that makes the novel quite hard to describe. The novel sweeps you away, and while you may not always keep track of every character, it's too finely written and engaging for it to really matter.

Side Note: To say it is foreboding does not do justice to the novel’s sense of timing!

Side Side Note:
Candy House was written before the release of GPT-3.5, which makes it all the more impressive how prescient Egan is at describing these fictional automations.
It quite literally features a character who dilutes scenes from stories down into "stockblocks” and algebraic expressions, and another who struggles to express and understand love through quantifiable information. Sound familiar?
The novel demonstrates themes of hyperreality and the eroding boundaries between artificial records and our collective privacy, recognizing the overbearing and unmistakable way big data is swarming every corner of our society.
“All this thinking melded and when ChatGPT came along, it felt like the real world embodiment of a lot of these ideas I’d been thinking about.” - Egan
We are at war with human identity and subjective thinking, and while this is worth another post in another time, some regrets felt by Mandala’s CEO in this novel may also prove prescient in years to come.

The NYT described this book as “a social network, the literary version of the collaborative novel written by your friends and friends of friends on Facebook or Instagram, each link opening on a new protagonist. It is a spectacular palace built out of rabbit holes.”

Egan’s main focus, I believe, is on social and familial relationships within these imagined technological parameters. It is incredibly emotional, illuminating personal dynamics in a profound and relatable way (how memories control, invite, and compress us).

It presents paradigm-shifting technologies with nuance, rocking back and forth but ultimately maintaining focus on the human condition. The very core of Egan's work, in my opinion, is on how human beings deal with one another. Jennifer Egan is as witty as always, and the way her characters interact with each other is just so much fun. You don't neeeeed to read A Visit from the Goon Squad (still recognized as her most famous …. and pulitzer prize winning… novel) before Candy House, but it does enhance the experience.

The sentimentality surprised me, but it is exactly what the book required.

Egan goes for it and deals with humanity at its very core. The dangers of modern technologies….social media… individuality…dopamine…the very basis of human authenticity; it's all there.

Its ending absolutely demolished me as well. I keep thinking about it...
Anyways, do yourself a treat and absorb it.

Candy Man out.