Book review: ‘The Candy House’ | Your memories are not yours alone

Express News Service

Four years ago, I bought a copy of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) at a book sale, on a whim, thinking it was a crime thriller. I was wrong––in my defence, the title was misleading. I learned about it much later and when I finally read it last week to pad myself for the free fall that The Candy House would be, I found it astounding. There are so many people in these books that it becomes kind of impossible to keep track of everything that goes on. All of them, though, are somehow related by blood, marriage, or friendship.

If Egan’s 2010 novel is set in the world of music, her follow-up story traces the rise of technology to an extent where exchanging consciousness becomes the norm of the day. But this seemingly sci-fi angle takes a backseat for a large part because Egan is interested mainly in digging into the lives of her characters. And in her hand, you have to remember that several decades pass in the breadth of a single sentence. And just like that, some get married and some die.

The Candy House features more than a dozen characters whose intersecting routines make for interesting discussions over coffees and scones. You get a man who turns into a figure of inspiration after his attempt at killing himself by jumping out of a hot air balloon fails, and a kleptomaniac who begins to return the things that she has stolen to the folks they belong to. All these little parts do not, by any degree, add to the strange curve that Egan draws. Nevertheless, they give you a glimpse of the complicated twists that occur in––and around––us.

For better or worse, our ideas about ourselves keep changing. And, similarly, our aspirations pirouette around different points at different periods. Maybe that’s what Egan is doing in this novel. She’s at her best when she puts two characters face to face for a conversation, as her dialogues sparkle in ways that can be described not just funny but also outlandish.

I enjoyed the enemies-turned-friends equation between Noreen and Jules. All it takes for them to let bygones be bygones is the good old recipe of small talk in which they reveal bits and pieces of the troubles that are haunting them. But when Egan tries to ground ‘Own Your Unconscious’––the technological marvel that helps us to view our memories––in the realm of reality, she misses the forest for the trees. Her characters don’t wrestle with the nitty-gritties of privacy much.

We’ve been seeing the advantages and horrors that come with the sharing of our thoughts and pictures on public platforms for more than a decade and a half. Now, imagine how darker it can get with our memories. Of course, as Egan writes, it can solve crimes. But what can we do when they are accessed by somebody without our consent? And, furthermore, there’s always the danger of governments spying on their critics.

My other, perhaps naïve, concern involves dreams. Can dreams be recorded and streamed, too? The Amazon Prime series Upload, created by Greg Daniels, also deals with the theme of artificially storing memories. But it has a better logical argument going for it, so all its screws are tightened. Upload also questions the different policies that are made for different sections of the society––to be precise, the haves and the have-nots. Egan, however, doesn’t touch upon the topic of capitalism in her work. But most of her principal characters are wealthy enough to own speedboats, travel to foreign countries without having to keep a tab on the money that flows out of their pockets, and so on.

But, wait, that’s not the be-all and end-all of The Candy House. Its beauty lies in its bizarreness. Egan reshapes the notion of a novel by dividing some portions along the lines of bullet points and emails. 
Writing long chapters, as though the characters are sending only emails, is tricky since it comes across as a juvenile gimmick. Sally Rooney did that last year in Beautiful World, Where Are You. And Egan continues the tradition by making the emails appear curt and sassy. 

As long as the authors hit the right notes while experimenting with the forms, it’s all fun and games.

The Candy House 
By: Jennifer Egan
Publisher: Little Brown
Pages: 352
Price: Rs 1599