The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
(Format used for this read: Print–Hardback from the LIBRARY which is the BEST!)
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.
This book had SUCH promise when I found it in the “New Release” section of the local library.
(Anyone else out there just LOOOOVE the thrill of perusing that area? The fresh, new stories just waiting to be discovered….all the pages still crisp and the crinkly plastic cover still slick and shiny…has that fresh new book smell but at the same time that classic library book smell….OH IT IS SO WONDERFUL)
The premise of this book was captivating and had so many possibilities…
But the reality of reading it fell short for me, at least for the first half.
All the chapters are different characters, which is something I always enjoy, and each chapter was written differently, which COULD have been enjoyable…but a lot of it was just kind of jumbled and confusing.
I should have known there would be trouble here when the very first chapter is narrated by the character of Bix…who is a black man…and this author is a VERY WHITE WOMAN.
UMMMM….ma’am what makes you think you can accurately write from a POV of a black man?
Y’all know this rubs me the wrong way…it feels very wrong and inauthentic and even exploitative in a way.
I have spoken on this issue MANY times before….but who you really should hear about on this issue is not another white person like myself but a Black person, especially an author.
Head on over to Google and read up on this.
So anyway….that was the first thing I was not crazy about here.
I mostly read this book before bed each night and I would read like 5 paragraphs before I would start to drift off.
It just could NOT keep my attention or my focus….took me a billion years to get past the first half of this book and this read isn’t even very long!!!
But things took a small turn when I got to the chapter in the second half that was voiced by a teenager named Molly.
Things got a bit more interesting at that point…and I began to make the distant connections of all the previously mentioned characters….but keeping it all straight in the storyline felt impossible to me at times.
The story as a whole didn’t feel very fluid or easy to comprehend….I still don’t think I understand fully what I read and I am certain I missed a LOT of things in the plot.
Was this a take on how technology will evolve into something worse and more evil than it is now…or not at all?
Is humanity doomed because of emerging technology….or is it not??
This book definitely made my brain spin but not in that good “let’s dive deep” kinda way I totally dig.
My opinion on this book hits at the 50/50 mark on many different levels: my comprehension, my enjoyment, my understanding, and my entertainment.
This is one of those “so-so” reads for me, y’all.
Every single review I’ve seen out there just RAAAVVVEEDDDD about it so IDK…I’m the odd man out on this one (just like I was for Where The Crawdads Sing)….so whatevs.
Another “it was just okay” for me.