The Candy House: A Novel

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF THE ECONOMIST TOP SIX BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF SLATE’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022

Also named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, LitHub, Self, Book Riot, Vogue, Bookpage, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many more!

From one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes an “inventive, effervescent” (Oprah Daily) novel about the memory and quest for authenticity and human connection.

The Candy House opens with the staggeringly 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 basis.” Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes.

In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires 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 omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, 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).