“THE CANDY HOUSE”

By Jennifer Egan

Scribner ($28)

Nearly two decades into the era of social media, most of us realize it’s not a pure reflection of reality. We warn impressionable teenagers not to compare their true selves to cultivated snapshots of their idols’ lives and authenticity is spoken about like a summit we can only strive to reach. If social media profiles are the portraits we paint of ourselves, then the craquelure is becoming visible. We’re starting to get a sweet tooth for things that look and feel more real.

In her thought-provoking new novel, “The Candy House,” a “sister novel” of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” author Jennifer Egan ponders the possibilities of the post-social media age while expanding the “Goon Squad” universe and bringing its cultural conversation up to date. The book contains some of the experimental elements its predecessor famously used a decade ago, but this new installment is more explicitly a work of speculative fiction, imagining a world in which people can upload their memories and share them with the world.

Bix Bouton was a very minor character in the 2011 novel, but he’s arguably at the center of “The Candy House” where he becomes the Mark Zuckerberg of the future. He develops a piece of software to solve a common problem: he can’t fully remember a critical life event - one that readers witnessed in the previous book - and seeks a computer’s assistance. The resulting product, Own Your Unconscious, like Facebook, changes the world in a way its creator could have never dreamed.

Using predictive social algorithms developed by an anthropologist, Bouton creates this technology with a core feature that allows its users to extract all their memories and store them in a proprietary Mandala Cube. Optionally, people may choose to share their exports with other users, which also gives them “access to the anonymous thoughts of everyone in the world, living or dead, who [have] done the same.” Your entire mental history, now in the cloud.

It’s a fascinating and terrifying prospect, especially given how plausible it feels. Yet, despite Own Your Unconscious initially being lauded for letting users show a more authentic side of themselves than they did on the social media platforms of the past, issues of privacy are more of a concern than ever as people freely and willingly offer up the deepest parts of themselves for public consumption. This is the fairy tale symbol the title invokes: users are enticed by access to a shared public memory bank, but as they step into that figurative house built out of candy, they are blissfully unaware of the wolfish corporation looking to consume them.

“The Candy House” isn’t as good as “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” it’s better. Egan manages to make the book more ambitious and advanced than the novel for which she won the Pulitzer, but seamlessly incorporates the first book’s universe, almost as if she had intended to write this followup all along. She gives readers a reason to get excited about rereading “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” or, better yet, reading it for the first time.

Beloved characters like Benny Salazar and his former assistant Sasha make appearances, but the earlier book’s minor players step into starring roles here and many small details of “Goon Squad” are fleshed out or, occasionally, put into an infinitely more meaningful context; Bix Bouton’s dreamy monologue during his brief appearance in the first book becomes downright prophetic after the events of “The Candy House.” It’s those kinds of details that will make you wish all sequels could be this satisfying.

Olive Fellows is a freelance book critic and YouTube book reviewer living in Pittsburgh.

First Published: April 24, 2022, 10:30 a.m.