My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (Rating 3) – Upload. Download. Delete. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan opens with the intriguing premise that in the near future we can upload our life experiences, including those not available to conscious memory, and then watch not only our own, but those of everyone else. We could discover hidden truths, check the accuracy of our impressions, and understand the past. Unfortunately, this promising concept, dubbed Own Your Unconscious, is only sporadically reintroduced throughout the book. Instead readers are treated to a confectionary of dazzling riffs in chapters that are meant to be linked, but are merely disjointed. I was challenged to track the characters within one story, let alone across stories. As both a reader and a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I prioritize character development. Unfortunately, Egan doesn’t dwell on anyone long enough to get inside their (un)conscious selves or dive into their interactions with others. She captures the disconnect between people in today’s social media Zeitgeist, but given that I’m turned off by this fragmentation in real life, why would I choose to recapitulate the experience in a work of fiction? Like many tweets and posts, Egan’s writing is self-indulgent; she amuses herself rather than engaging readers. Fortunately, neither she nor we have to download the contents of our brains to assess one another’s thoughts and feelings. They’re right there on the page. And not worth replaying.
