The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan Free Book

 About The Book 

 * Named a Top Ten Stylish Book of 2022 by The New York Times Book Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Slate * Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker, NPR, Oprah Daily, Time, Harper's Bazaar, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Vogue, and multitudinous farther! * 

 

•  “ A compelling read that showcases Egan’s masterful fabricator. ” — Time 

•  “ glowing. ” — Vogue 

•  “ Radiant, exhilarating. ” Slate 

•  “ Mesmerizing A study- provoking examination of how and why we change. ” — People 

 

 From one of the most celebrated pens of our time comes an “ inventive, bouncy ”( Oprah Daily) new about the memory and quest for authenticity and mortal connection. 

 

 The Candy House opens with the largely 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 base. ” Bix is forty, with four youths, restless, and hopeless for a new idea, when he stumbles into a discussion group, mainly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “ materializing ” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “ Own Your Unconscious ” — which allows you access to every memory you ’ve ever had, and to partake your remembrances in exchange for access to the remembrances of others — has seduced multitudes. 

 

 In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “ counters ” who track and exploit conjurations 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 mortal to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually glowing, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and prepotency of mortal pining for connection, family, insulation, 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). 

This reading group companion for THE Delicacy HOUSE includes an preface, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and intriguing angles and motifs for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your discussion and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Preface

The Candy House follows a number of characters as they grapple with Bix Bouton’s revolutionary technology, “ Own Your Unconscious ” — a device that allows people to upload and partake their recollections. Naturally, people differ on whether a collaborative knowledge is a good thing. Some of those who despise it come “ eluders, ” abandoning their online individualities indeed as “ counters ” try to track their exposure. In this spectacular imagination of our near future, Egan explores the advantages and threats of invasive technologies, and the deep, universal mortal need for connection.

Motifs & Questions for Discussion 

 1. In nearly every chapter of The Candy House, characters are by disguise or turn out to be connected to other characters in unanticipated ways, or are seen from different perspectives, or are simply nonnatives to themselves. Talk about Jennifer Egan’s disquisition of knowability how we know ourselves and how others know us. 

 

 2. In the first chapter, Bix, disguised as a graduate pupil, tries tore-create the kinds of conversations he remembers having as a council and graduate pupil. Why are these discourses so hard for him to have in his adult life? And how essential is his disguise to the disclosure and discovery that follow? 

 

 3. The Candy House is made up of stories written in distinct narrative voices and styles. How do these different approaches affect your reading experience? Did you feel a kind of spark when you honored where the characters ’ lives bisected? 

 

 4. The Candy House is broken into four sections — “ figure ”( doubly), “ Break, ” and “ Drop ” — mimicking the structure of Electronic Dance Music. How do the events of each section fulfill its part in this structure, and how do the sections relate to each other? bandy why the author might have chosen to organize her book this way. 

 

 5. Seeking authenticity is a core theme of The Candy House. According to Alfred Hollander, authenticity requires “ violent unmasking ”( runner 30), which is why he uses disruptive geste 

 , similar as screaming in public, to produce undressed responses. What do you make of Alfred’s gospel? Does technology like social media lead to lower authentic communication and experience? What are the limitations of Alfred’s results? 

 

 6. still, would you use it? What are its advantages and disadvantages? Are rudiments of Own Your Unconscious formerly present in the Internet? Would you personalize your recollections to the Collaborative knowledge or would you come an eluder, If the “ Own Your Unconscious ” technology were real... or commodity in between? 

 

 7. Miles Hollander is a riddle to himself. He's thwarted by the differing issues in his own life and his kinsman Sasha’s. Yet when he goes up in a hot air balloon and sees Sasha’s artwork from over, everything comes into perspective for Miles — both his kinsman’s puppets and his life. Talk about Miles’s discovery, and how and why distance — and art — help him to make it. What kept him from seeing effects easily ahead? 

 

 8. Data experts are called “ counters ” in the Candy House. For some, like Lincoln, being a counter isn't just a job but an identity — counters are hyperanalytical people who “ understood figures before... language ”( runner 81). What perspective do we gain by breaking down the mortal experience into data? And where does the riddle of mortal experience lie — the part that data can not describe? Is it possible to attune those two plazas? 

 

 9. Throughout “ Rhyme Scheme, ” Lincoln refers to “ researchers ” and “ imitators. ” How does he describe these two groups? And how accurate do these orders really feel to be, both in this chapter and throughout the novel? 

10. In “ Bright Day, ” Roxy watches a Dungeons & Dragons game each week at her medicine treatment center. She sensations at how characters are created and how players come absorbed in the game. What part does D&D play in telling Roxy’s own story? How do her compliances on the game apply to the other characters ’ gests in the novel? 

 

 11. “ delegates ” are professionals who cover up for eluders by maintaining their abandoned individualities online. utmost delegates are fabrication pens who impersonate multiple individualities at formerly. suppose about why someone might come a deputy. Would you? What's the significance of fabrication pens taking such a job? Are all novelists delegates of a kind? 

 

 12. Across the novel, we see characters through several perspectives, including their own. We see them through the eyes of those who are close to them and those who only know them slightly. What do you make of this holistic view? What might you learn if you could see yourself in this way — and would you want to? What does this liar approach allow Egan to do that she might not be suitable to, using a more traditional structure? 

 

 13. “ Lulu the Spy, 2032 ” and “ See Below ” use the two most unusual narrative styles in the novel. Why do you suppose Egan chose to approach these particular chapters as she did? Imagine that these stories were told in a further conventional format. What would be lost? 

 

 14. In “ Eureka Gold, ” we learn of the pressure and conflict between Bix Bouton and his youthful child, Gregory. What's the nature of the gulf between them? And how does their father- son pressure reflect the larger enterprises in The Candy House? What do you make of Gregory’s final discoveries in this chapter — about his father and about himself? 

 

 15. The new ends with the story of Ames Hollander, age eleven, hitting a home run and winning the baseball game for his platoon in 1991. Why do you suppose Egan chose to end the novel with a story set before utmost of the inventions and the action take place? What part does technology play in the final chapter, and how does it reflect back on the rest of the stories leading up to it? 

 

 16. Own Your Unconscious does n’t live in the real world — yet. Or does it? How is life with Bix’s invention different from the virtual world we formerly live with? And what does Egan suggest in the final chapter about the part of fabrication in our experience of the collaborative unconscious? 

 

 17. still, what do you suppose about the way Egan moves the central protagonists from Goon Squad to the fringe in this novel, and gives minor characters( a couple of them not yet born in Goon Squad) major places then?