an exhilarating delight.Egan opens windows on entrancing new worlds, in which what happened depends on who's telling the story.' -Laura Miller, Slate 'A brilliant demonstration of the unquantifiable pleasures of great fiction.' Egan goes all in on the power of storytelling and of fiction.' -Dwight Garner, The New York Times It's as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century triple-decker novel onto a flash drive. James Hannaham, New York Times Book Review She should have the kind of fawning sycophants that dudes like Franzen and Denis Johnson do. astonishing, even a little bewildering! Jenny is shockingly underrated. ' The Candy House is really an incredible feat. '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. ONE OF THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022Īlso named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, LitHub, Self, Book Riot, Vogue, Bookpage, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many more!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 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST TOP SIX BOOKS OF 2022 ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022

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