The Candy House

This is a fantastic book – 4.5 stars. I'd give it the full 5 if I hadn't already read and absolutely loved A Visit from the Goon Squad. This book has the same style, in that each chapter is from a different character's perspective, and the subsequent chapter is from the perspective of a minor character from the previous chapter. In that way, Candy House could be considered something of a sequel to Goon Squad, if not for the non-sequential nature of both novels, which jump between generations (part of what makes them so interesting). Characters from the the Goon Squad reappear here, but as minor characters (and vice versa, I think, but I'd have to go back to Goon Squad to confirm; I might re-read it again next just to experience that puzzle-piece delight).

This one is a bit more of a sci-fi, with a company called Mandala (which could easily be Meta) patenting technology to externalize memories, allowing yourself and others to view them like movies. Once those memories are extracted, there is the option to upload them to the Collective Unconscious, a database of anonymized memories, which you can only access once you've contributed. Searching those memories is like social-media stalking on steroids. It's clearly a take on how far we can go with social media, and calls into question both what it means to be authentic and have authentic, meaningful relationships. Fascinating, powerful stuff.

As ever, Egan delivers some powerful writing from fascinating perspectives, with some edgy chapters that keep the reading experience fresh. It's hard to put down. Highly recommend.

I have very little interest in reading a book that contains the phrase ‘suckling at her breast' in the first few lines. Flipping through the first chapter, it got worse and it's a nope for me.

Abandoned, p.57. Then again, p.162, and again p.200, and so on. Lost track of the number of times I abandoned it. Caught up on New Yorkers. Gazed at New Mexico skies. And each time, went back to reading, because so many people I respect & trust speak so highly of this book.

The gimmick was clever, and well done: each chapter is a completely different voice, tone, perspective, style; like it was a writing exercise. Okay, Egan is a talented writer. I'm impressed. If you appreciate fine writing, this is your thing.

It's just not my thing. It might've been, if the story worked for me, but it didn't. Far too much That's-Not-How-It-Works, and too few relatable characters. I realize that wanting to care about characters is a defect in both my personality and intelligence; it is not a flaw I am able to fix. I also realize that my T-N-H-I-W quirk is inconsistent and even hypocritical, since I happily read about hyperintelligent spiders and TV-devouring Murderbots and magical unicorns. Why did I dwell on it so much in this book? Three aspects, I think.

First, that's not how memory works. Seriously, this is kindergarten neuroscience. Memory is not a recorder, you can't simply hoover up forgotten memories. The book gets this so fundamentally wrong, and it's such an important part of the plot, that I could not suspend disbelief. (Also, human behavior and relationships are quantifiable—an important subplot—but not without involving astronomical, ridiculously-impossible numbers of variables.)

Second, okay, let's pretend it were possible to upload memories to the cloud: who would do so? Who among us has no secrets? No truly private memories, fantasies, desires, misdeeds, embarrassments, or even quiet personal/ prides? Egan draws parallels to privacy loss in the social media age, trading your surf habits for free music, but that's not even close to comparable.

Finally... fine, let's go with it all. You can retrieve and net-share all your memories, and you do. Egan doesn't even follow through with the really interesting ramifications of such a development. Like, all the asymmetries! What do megacorporations and governments do with all that? How will it be used to further oppress disadvantaged peoples? How will banks authenticate now that the entire world knows your password, favorite pet's name, and Dream Vacation? Everyone you meet, for the rest of your life, you now need to wonder: what do they know about me? And, beautiful people: even if they themselves haven't uploaded their memories, some of their circle will have. Are there no stalkers in this world? What are the unexpected consequences? What are the right questions to ponder? That's what makes good SF.

On the positive side, though, we could learn what happened to our favorite Van Halen concert t-shirt. So it really is a difficult trade-off.

Bah. Enough. You get my point. But back to the characters: the vast majority were shallow, self-absorbed, banal. The penultimate chapter, that was good: depth, complexity. A few other snippets of light throughout the book: again, Egan is clearly very smart and compassionate, so I assume that she deliberately chose to write about vapid people. Which, again, is not my thing.