His company Mandala’s big game changer, however, is Own Your Unconscious, a wardrobe-sized piece of tech that allows users to access their memories, and, if they then upload them to the Mandala Cube, those of everyone else who has done the same. Yet where that novel explored ideas about time and pop music, The Candy House probes the invasive omnipotence of the digital sphere and is largely set in a terrifyingly plausible near future.Įgan’s brave new world is the dream child of Bix Bouton, a visionary who essentially resembles a black Mark Zuckerberg, and whose desire to see “everyone rise together in a new metaphysical sphere” has led to the creation of an online environment based on anthropological research into predictive behaviour (although Egan doesn’t explain how his creation differs from the internet as we know it). The Candy House falls into the former category indeed, it’s a loose sequel to Goon Squad, sharing many of its characters and the same evasive structure: both are arranged as a series of loosely connected short stories. Jennifer Egan tends to write two sorts of novels – mind-bogglingly clever books about metaphysics, such as her 2011 Pulitzer-winner A Visit from the Goon Squad, or straightforward, deliciously enjoyable epics, such as her most recent historical novel, 2017’s Manhattan Beach.
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