People could do this and then access their own forgotten memories or other people’s memories of the same event, or even other memories. It’s also difficult to give a synopsis of the story: A guy created a way of uploading a person’s subconscious memories to a cube.

I think that both of those would be easier to follow on a written page, (or at least a format with more landscape). Also, I read this eARC on my phone and didn’t like the format of the email and tweet chapters or the bit about the beauties. Perhaps I was meant to read “A Visit From the Goon Squad” first – apparently, it introduced many of the same characters. The story kept jumping around and I got confused. I was really intrigued by the memory sharing idea, but there were so many characters in this and their relationships were hard to distinguish at first.

I really wanted to love this one! I read Jennifer Egan’s “Manhattan Beach” and liked it. This is an honest and unbiased review.Ģ/5 Thank you to Net Galley and the author for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. Especially given how long ago Good Squad was first published. I also wish there was more said in the blurb about its tie-ins with Good Squad so I’d have known to read book 1 again. However it’s a bit too obscure at times and hard to follow for me to give it five stars. If The Candy House wins awards I wouldn’t be surprised. If you love contemporary writing, want to explore the idea of consciousness uploaded to a ‘cloud’ (of sorts), or just experience some in-depth personalities then I would highly recommend Eagan’s latest novel. So be prepared to need your dictionary for some of the doctoral characters dialogue.

There is a multitude of characters and intertwined stories to keep track of (with no cheat sheets to help), and it’s written at a high literary level. Overall this is brilliant writing, as Egan tends to be. Both are closer to the end of the novel, and so took me by surprise. We experience one story entirely through operative statements, and another set of character perspectives from emails sent back and forth. Jennifer Egan does bring in some unconventional storytelling methods in The Candy House. All our characters are connected in some way (and things come full circle) but I was still sad we didn’t go back to the preteen girl or our tech genius/CEO from the first chapter. One thing that was a bit disappointing is that we never go back to any of same characters once their narrative is over. Like that first book, The Candy House is written from many different character perspectives. There are some major character overlaps that I feel maybe I missed things in as it’s been 11 years since I last read Goon Squad. I kind of wish I had reread Goon Squad first.

Review of the candy house