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The Candy House

By: Jennifer Egan
Narrated by: Michael Boatman, Nicole Lewis, Thomas Sadoski, Colin Donnell, Griffin Newman, Rebecca Lowman, Jackie Sanders, Lucy Liu, Christian Barillas, Tara Lynne Barr, Alex Allwine, Emily Tremaine, Kyle Beltran, Dan Bittner, Chris Henry Coffey
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Publisher's summary

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE of the TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR by THE NEW YORK TIMES * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * SLATE* THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER *

Also 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!

OLIVIA WILDE to direct A24's TV adaptation of THE CANDY HOUSE and A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD!

From 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.

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. 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.

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. 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. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love.

“A beautiful exploration of loss, memory, and history” (San Francisco Chronicle), “this is minimalist maximalism. It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive” (The New York Times).

©2022 Jennifer Egan. All rights reserved (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Interview: Jennifer Egan Asks, How Much Sharing Is Too Much Sharing?

'I'm looking for the action in my own head.'
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  • The Candy House
  • 'I'm looking for the action in my own head.'

Editor's Pick

You can’t resist The Candy House
When I heard that 2022 would be the year Jennifer Egan was coming out with a companion to her mind-expanding, Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, I felt an immediate need to revisit this book I first read way back in 2010. I downloaded and listened and realized, wow—I missed a lot the first time around, or maybe it’s me that’s changed over the past 10-plus years? And then it was time to take in The Candy House. I didn’t have to go through this preparation—both novels stand on their own—but it was a very satisfying experiment. The Candy House is so much fun! It comes alive in dozens of entwined stories, performed by an incredible cast of narrators. It’s a world a lot like this one, if this world had a utopian/dystopian product known as Own Your Unconscious, a cube that lets a user upload his or her memories, tap into the memories of others who’ve uploaded theirs, and watch them like movies. It’s all so seemingly unimaginable yet inevitable at the same time. I’m still a little dizzy. —Tricia F., Audible Editor