The Candy House

This is a complex novel that centers around the idea that in the near future, people are able to upload their consciousness to the cloud where other people can have access to it. The book starts with Bix Bouton, the tech guru who invented the technology to do this, attending a salon-like party incognito and worrying that he is all out of great ideas. Going “incognito”/posing as someone you're not vs. authenticity is a theme in this world. There is a significant group of people, “eluders,” who are resistant to the idea of granting the public access to their private lives. They maintain a “shell” online, an account that posts and interacts to give the illusion that a real person is behind it for as long as possible, while the real person escapes to somewhere inaccessible. There are also people who work to facilitate “eluding,” a kind of technological resistance movement. There is also a character who, from a young age, demands authenticity from the people around him, and as an adult creates scenes in public to elicit “authentic” reactions from bystanders.

Chapters in The Candy House are written in different styles; some are straightforward third person omniscient narration, some are epistolary (email style), some are what turns out to be first person-writing-a-guidebook style. The novel tends to move from one character to another without going back much. Although it starts with Bix Bouton's worries about his ability to come up with great ideas and maintain his mover-and-shaker status, once it moves on from him it doesn't go back until near the end. I found that a bit frustrating, because once I invested in a character I wanted more development of their story. That frustration was somewhat tempered by the fact that the characters are interconnected–they are children, spouses, friends or acquaintances of someone you've already met, so you are getting development of those stories, but it's on the periphery.
At times it felt like a loosely connected series of short stories or novellas on a theme rather than a novel, though.