{"id":12,"date":"2022-04-26T15:59:58","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T15:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.voxghostwriting.com\/blog\/?p=12"},"modified":"2022-04-26T15:59:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T15:59:58","slug":"in-the-candy-house-jennifer-egan-delivers-an-inventive-novel-for-a-digital-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.voxghostwriting.com\/blog\/in-the-candy-house-jennifer-egan-delivers-an-inventive-novel-for-a-digital-age\/","title":{"rendered":"In The Candy House, Jennifer Egan delivers an inventive novel for a digital age"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her typically inventive fashion, Jennifer Egan calls\u00a0The Candy House<\/a>, the follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize winner\u00a0A Visit from the Goon Squad<\/a>\u00a0(2011), a \u201csibling novel\u201d.<\/p>\n

Is this new book smarter, better-looking, more charismatic than its older sister or brother? I don\u2019t think it is a question worth posing: it\u2019s easy to love these two fascinating children just the same.<\/p>\n

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Review: The Candy House \u2013 Jennifer Egan (Corsair)<\/em><\/p>\n

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According to Egan, The Candy House<\/p>\n

follows a number of [A Visit from the Goon Squad\u2019s] peripheral characters into their own futures and pasts to create an independent work with a new set of preoccupations and center of gravity, but equal affinity for technology, humor, and structural freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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In this bustling, multifaceted report on contemporary consciousness, Egan more than delivers on her claims. In particular, she shows herself to be both shrewd and adept at assembling the right characters to develop her themes. She opens a window not just to the America that is, but the America that may very well come to be.<\/p>\n

Among the novel\u2019s teeming ensemble of players is Bix Bouton, tech entrepreneur and helmsman of Mandala, the company he has formed to realise his vision of the next quantum leap in social media and virtual reality. Mandala\u2019s flagship products include Own Your Unconscious and The Collective Unconscious, programs that allow people to upload the content of their minds, which can then be shared on a global online platform that allows subscribers to relive memories and experiences.<\/p>\n

Then there is the reclusive Miranda Kline, the late-blooming anthropologist whose research on \u201caffinity and trust\u201d, based on her study of a Brazilian tribe, is appropriated to drive Mandala\u2019s social media revolution, in a way that is the perverse opposite of her intention.<\/p>\n

There are also characters we might call quantifiers, for want of a better term.<\/p>\n

One is Lincoln, a \u201csenior empiricist and metrics expert\u201d, whose world view has become so dominated by quantification that he subjects his courtship of a female co-worker to an ongoing analysis that involves units of attractiveness and odds of success in relation to his rivals.<\/p>\n

Another is Chris Salazar, who works for a start-up entertainment company that is attempting, in a tradition stretching back to the\u00a0Russian Formalists<\/a>, to reduce movie storytelling to standardised elements \u2013 stockblocks \u2013 which he converts into algebraic equations.<\/p>\n

At first blush, it would appear the main concern of The Candy House is digital technology. But such a narrow term does a disservice to Egan\u2019s nuanced treatment of the theme.<\/p>\n

Sure, the novel brims with characters and through-lines (I hesitate to call them storylines) that bear witness to the rise of the internet since the 1990s. One example is the reaction of a music mogul to the long-forgotten\u00a0Napster<\/a>, the free music-sharing platform. Unsurprisingly, he is horrified at what it will do to his bottom line.<\/p>\n

What interests Egan is not technology for its own sake, but how it has transformed human experience at both the individual and social level. In particular, she is concerned with how we struggle to find our place in the world, and form and maintain meaningful relationships with others.<\/p>\n

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