“The Candy House” by Jennifer Egan

I bought this book recently at a bookstore, it has been a while since I read anything by Egan but I really like her works. This book was no different, I really liked the format and how she takes an idea and describes it from several different angles through her different characters.

Largely, the book deals with the outcomes of introducing a sort of social media company where you can upload your unconsciousness and view other peoples as well. So it starts with the inventor of this technology and discusses his family, then moves to the woman who came up with the algorithm behind the social media whose work he basically stole. From there it takes a bit of a turn and focuses on an adjacent individual who becomes a spy for the US and uses technology from this to record her every move, and afterwards has a hard time readjusting to civilian life and thinks the government is monitoring her every move. From there it goes back to the original family and ends on a vignette of them before this technology was ever invented.

Now the book came out in 2022, and I sort of liked that there were a few references to a pandemic around 2020 but nothing concrete was said about COVID. It feels pretty true to what these times are like where a lot of people ignore that the pandemic really ever happened. The whole thing feels pretty prescient by focusing on the social media and the effects/benefits of this time of technology where you have access to anyone’s memories at any given time.

I liked the chapters about Lulu the best as those are the ones that change format. First there’s the narration from a childhood friend of Lulu’s that’s in horrible grammar, you know like a 9 year old would write. Then her chapter is all in second person thought fragment as she records her thoughts as a spy. Then the next chapter is all in emails as she tries to get in contact with her birth father. The change in narration really makes those all stand out and highlight the dehumanizing experiences she goes through as well as the recovery period. The emails also allow the chapter to include more characters’ thoughts, bringing more of them together before ending the book.

I really enjoyed this read, it felt like it was able to speak to what is happening now with the internet and social media more than most things I have read. It is in the same universe as A Visit from the Goon Squad but I read that about a decade ago and couldn’t remember what characters were pulled from that work and which were not. I’ll have to revisit it at some point!