Genius, genius, genius. ( )

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.

Was really looking forward to reading as this as I loved A Visit from the Goon Squad. With that said I had read the Goon Squad a long time and didn't remember it as being ripe for a sequel.
I think you could easily read this without reading the first one.

Overall I really enjoyed this book, fascinating premise, interesting story which has some real relevance to advances in modern life. But the real star of this book is the characters which weave though the book as each chapter unfold as new story told in a new voice.
My only knock is that the pace and story drags a little around the 60-80% area, thankfully it picks up again and the ending is quite something
I had this book as my book of the month back in March this year on my site
https://quizlit.org/book-of-the-month-march-2023

( )

Neen, niet voor mij. Ik zie wel dat Egan op ingenieuze wijze de aantrekkelijk en gevaarlijk kanten van een nieuw soort technologie verkent, waarbij mensen namelijk hun eigen herinnerde ervaringen opladen in een collectief extern geheugen. Op die manier komt een enorme databank tot stand die zowel ten goede als ten kwade kan gebruikt worden (en gebruikt wordt). Maatschappelijk zeker relevant. Maar dit werkstuk is zo doorwrocht (met voortdurende sprongen in perspectief en tijd), dat het mijn leesplezier vergalde. Als je een goede puzzelaar bent, dan kan je hier wel van genieten, natuurlijk, maar voor mij is het gewoon te veel van het goede. ( )

It is an acknowledged fact that writing book reviews based on the audio version is most frustrating. Not having a hard copy as reference makes it nearly impossible to recall the essential details such as character names, the order of events, and connections between characters. That said, I really enjoyed this novel just for the action, which glides back to A Visit From The Goon Squad and forward to new nightmarish AI inventions. The multiple readers are uniformly excellent. I know I will have read reviews written by others to help me to identify all the complex bonds between all the interconnected personnel and their mutual commission of so many mistakes, but it was still a perfectly enjoyable eleven hours, eleven minutes. ( )

As Bennie Salazar might hum to himself: "oops, I did it again..." Egan uses many of the same characters as "Goon Squad" and, as noticeably, the same structure, including a 'unique' way of telling a story in one of the last chapters/stories of the novel. If you liked it the first time you'll probably like it the second time while if the first time had some issues for you, well, so does the second!

However, it is true I think that "Candy House" has more of a traditional plot connecting many of the various characters and stories. That plot being the development of a method for people to upload all of their memories and even their subjective conscious states of mind into the cloud to be accessible to anyone, and a concurrent movement of "eluders" who get bots to take over their online personas while they go off-grid.

Why people need bots to run their online accounts instead of just deleting or abandoning them, I don't know. I don't pay for a bot to run my mostly abandoned Facebook account after all, why would I? I didn't understand why these characters would either. Which points to a weakness of the book. Egan creates such a vast cast of characters and continually starts over from new perspectives that much of the novel is working on characterization and filling these characters out. Treatment of this plot is therefore somewhat shallow. You're not going to get a very deep dive into philosophies of social media or uploading consciousness or futurism or anything like that.

What you will get is a lot of skilled characterization and a couple of nonconventional storytelling chapters, one in email and one in a series of brief aphorisms, sort of like the opening section of Kierkegaard's Either/Or.

It's interesting to note that almost every time I've seen someone mention "Goon Squad" when talking about this sequel of sorts, they add that they remember very little about it. I'd suggest that's another weakness of this particular storytelling mode shared between these two books, and that you'll probably remember very little about "Candy House" a few years down the line either. ( )