The Candy House, Jennifer Egan, author; Michael Boatman, Niclole Lewis, Thomas Sadoski, Colin Donneli, Griffin Newman, Rebecca Lowman, Jackie Sanders, Lucy Liu, Christian Barillas, Tara Lynne Barr, Alex Allwine, Emily Tremaine, Kyle Beltran, Dan Bittner, Chris Henry Coffey, a full cast of narrators.
Bix Bouton is a successful, black businessman. He married his wife, Lizzie, a white woman, in 1992. He is the founder of a technology company called Mandala. It has changed the character of the world. Mandala is an innovative business designed to make life easier and less stressful. Bix believed that an expansion of consciousness would free everyone to leave racism behind as a thing of the past. It would eliminate secrets, by freeing all ideas and memories, to be shared by all. Thus, we would all be the same, and we would all have equal access. There would be no secrets. Eventually, our every move would be tracked and our every thought would be known. All would be stored in a data base that could be easily accessed. Crime would diminish. Hatred would disappear
There are several characters followed throughout this novel that hearken back to “A Visit From The Goon Squad”. The novel begins with the memories of four young men, born in the thirties, who meet again in 1965. They had been part of a small singing group in college, known as the Dildos. This book, follows them, their relatives and friends, for the next several decades and into the future. The storyline introduces many characters and many timelines. Neither the narrative nor the timeline is linear. Each chapter is a story on its own, and the author does try to knit all the disparate components together at the end. She is only somewhat successful.
I struggled to understand the message the author wanted to impart as the characters bounced around with the timeline. Often, I simply lost the thread of the story. I was drawn back again and again, however, because of the writing style, which, although it was sometimes confusing and too wordy, was also brilliant at other times. Still, when once in awhile I would think I understood the message from a character, another would enter the scene and I would be again, unsuccessfully, trying to place that character into the appropriate place in the novel.
For instance, as an example of one character’s confused behavior we watch Chris go on and on about his job. He was “algebraizing” all thoughts and all intentions, reducing them to algebraic equations. Could there be such a man, one who was able to reduce the collective thoughts of the entire population, down to algorithms? Would he then be unable to control the events occurring around him, allowing himself to be duped by acquaintances or seduced by his professor, because in spite of his intelligence, he had so little common sense? Did Chris even believe in his work? Was the Professor Miranda Kline important? What about Comstock who actually duped him into carrying a suitcase for his odd “lady friend”, a stranger to Chris? Were both those incidents important? Did that narrative come together? Would the sharing of a collective consciousness, so completely, ultimately allow for more freedom and less stress or would it curtail freedom because if everyone knew what everyone thought, would it not diminish the need to think? Would everyone have to conform to this behavior? What about the eluders who wish to be unique again, not to be universally known in a data bank, like everyone else? Mondrian helped them to elude Mandala. They also ran a game room for drug addicts on Methadone. Was this incongruous? Even supporters of Mandala sometimes left the ranks to try and become somewhat invisible again. O'Brien was a saboteur. Were there really only two choices, Exile (Mandala) vs Freedom (Mondrian)? Was there no gray area?
Near the end of his life, was even Bix Bouton questioning the results life’s work? Did it improve society or was it actually tearing it down? If everyone could be tracked, did his programs provide more freedom or cage people in? If we all were privy to each other’s thoughts, would we eventually stifle imagination as all ideas would be out there and all would be funneled into one similar space? Would there be pressure to accept one idea over all else? Who would get credit for the idea once it was out in the collective consciousness? Would it not be an invasion of privacy?
Did Bouton’s original business idea of providing more freedom with more technology, actually get subverted so that it created less freedom as more technological advances were made? Did collective consciousness create a lack of creativity and imagination? Did conversation get stifled and all but disappear? Was it fair for Bix to make his money from an idea spawned by someone else? He did develop the idea further into a practical application. Was everyone required to be tracked and have their thoughts and memories made public?
The name Mandala made me think of Nelson Mandela, the two words were so close. Was this a device engineered by Egan? After all Mandela was a man who had lost his freedom for decades? When he was freed, was he freer to do as he wished or more encumbered because he was in the public eye, obligated to everyone, no longer only those who followed his philosophy? Surely, his life was more comfortable, but was the lack of privacy better? Was the founder of Mandala deliberately portrayed as black so as to make the reader wonder if this idea of collective consciousness also created slaves of all its followers? These are unconventional questions for an unconventional novel.
The novel was written with so many innovative ideas and creativity, but I think it tried to tackle too many of the problems of society; it was too long and too convoluted for most people to stay with it as the verbiage seemed to get out of control. For me, in the ened, it was still just too disconnected. However, when I finished the book, I was struck with this thought: How can a book that is written so brilliantly be so difficult to understand? Although it is the second book, the first being “A Visit From the Goon Squad”, I did not get the connection until I went back and read my review of that book, written a decade ago, in order to recall some of the characters. I realized, immediately, that I had pretty much the same feeling about both books. While the prose is often exceptional, the story doesn’t flow easily from one character to another. The author is so imaginative, witty, and thoughtful, but it was often repetitive, overworked and overly technical. Her ideas did not travel from one to another smoothly, nor did they intersect with each other conveniently. I can only hope I understood some of this novel and that my review is logical.

It didn’t draw me in.