The candy house : a novel

Title:

Author:

Summary:

"The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own Your Unconscious"--That allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others-has seduced multitudes. But not everyone. In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles-from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets."-- Publisher's description.

General Note:

Playing time from publisher's Web site.

Edition:

Unabridged.

Physical Description:

9 audio discs (approximately 11 hr., 11 min.) ; 4 3/4 in.

Genre:

Psychological fiction.

Audiobooks.

Subject Term:

Memory -- Fiction.

Social media -- Fiction.

Technology -- Fiction.

Consciousness -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Simon & Schuster Audio,

Publication Date:

2022

ISBN:

9781797128405

Publication Information:

[New York, NY] : Simon & Schuster Audio, [2022]

Call Number:

CDB EGAN

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003564393	Adult Fiction Books on CDs	EGAN Jennifer	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE of the TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR by THE NEW YORK TIMES * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * SLATE* THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER *

Also named one of the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, Self, Vogue, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many more!

OLIVIA WILDE to direct A24's TV adaptation of THE CANDY HOUSE and A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD !

From one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes an "inventive, effervescent" ( Oprah Daily ) novel about the memory and quest for authenticity and human connection.

The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own Your Unconscious"--which allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others--has seduced multitudes.

In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles--from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love.

"A beautiful exploration of loss, memory, and history" ( San Francisco Chronicle ), "this is minimalist maximalism. It's as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive" ( The New York Times).

Author Notes

Jennifer Egan was born in Chicago, Illinois on September 6, 1962. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and St. John's College, Cambridge. She is the author of The Invisible Circus, Look at Me, Emerald City and Other Stories, The Keep, and Manhattan Beach, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction in 2018. Her title, A Visit from the Goon Squad, won both the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Her short stories have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, Harpers, and Granta. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship. Her non-fiction articles appear frequently in the New York Times Magazine and have won a number of awards.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Egan returns to the fertile territory and characters of A Visit from the Goon Squad with an electrifying and shape-shifting story that one-ups its Pulitzer-winning predecessor. I'll see your PowerPoint chapter, Egan seems to say, and raise you a chapter in tweets, and another in emails and texts. In the near future, a platform called Own Your Unconscious allows memories to be uploaded to the cloud and accessed by anyone. "Counters" seek to ferret out "proxies" that help hide "eluders" who resist merging their "gray grabs" to the collective in order to leave their online personae behind. Not everyone sees this as panacea, and a countermovement called Mondrian arises. Appearances from music producer Bennie Salazar, his mentor Lou Kline, and their lovers and children provide sharp pleasures for Goon Squad fans, and Egan cleverly echoes the ambitious, savvy marketing schemes of real-world tech barons with Own Your Unconscious. It casts its spell on Bennie, whose punk rock days with the Flaming Dildos are long past: "Tongue-in-cheek nostalgia is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will, through which we hope to lure in a new generation and bewitch them," he writes in an email. Twisting through myriad points of view, narrative styles, and divergent voices, Egan proves herself as perceptive an interpreter of the necessity of human connection as ever, and her vision is as irresistible as the tech she describes. This is Egan's best yet. Agent: Binky Urban, ICM Partners. (Apr.)

Library Journal Review

Egan returns to the interlocking narrative structure of A Visit from the Goon Squad, once again embracing the distilled power of short fiction in individual chapters while subtly allowing the distinct, imaginative parts to crescendo into a sterling sum. But where her Pulitzer Prize-winning earlier novel proved to be more conceptual in its story's framework, this work is a more straightforward narrative, albeit rendered wonderfully kaleidoscopic. Egan's latest broadly centers on a technology called "Own Your Unconscious," a very near-future innovation that allows individuals to access every memory they've ever had and upload them to a collective virtual space in exchange for access to others' memories if desired. From here, Egan allows her narrative to gyre outward, tracing connected characters across decades and into the crannies of her richly realized world, made all the more portentous for looking only shades different (and darker) than our present one. But nothing here is about mere showmanship; everything is both imaginative and utilitarian, including its shape-shifting style, which regularly jumps between tenses, distinctive voices, and even forms (an epistolary chapter, a chapter of tweets). The result is something of a mosaic, each meticulously rendered chapter feeling nested within the others rather than simply lashed together. Most impressive, however, is the prescience--never resorting to cheap technophobia or didactic moralizing--with which Egan manages to ask: What does it cost us to taste the Candy House? VERDICT A forceful, wonderfully fragmented novel of a terrifyingly possible future, as intellectually rigorous as it is formally impressive, and yet another monumental work from Egan.--Luke Gorham