' The Candy House is really an incredible feat. astonishing, even a little bewildering! Jenny is shockingly underrated. “The novel - with its prismatic plotting and ever-shifting chorus of seekers, kooks, and visionaries - feels less like a house than a honeycomb full of fantastical rooms, each one alive and thrumming with bright, weird humanity.” -Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive” ( The New York Times).

“A beautiful exploration of loss, memory, and history” ( San Francisco Chronicle), “this is minimalist maximalism.

Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love. 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. 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. 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. 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. OLIVIA WILDE to direct A24's TV adaptation of THE CANDY HOUSE and A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD!įrom one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes an “inventive, effervescent” ( Oprah Daily) novel about the memory and quest for authenticity and human connection. ONE of the TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR by THE NEW YORK TIMES * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * SLATE* THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER *Īlso named one of the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, Self, Vogue, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many more!

The candy house paperback