The Candy House

When Bix Bouton, the founder of tech company Mandala, finds himself short of ideas, he hears about experiments involving using brain sensors to upload an animal’s perception. Within a few years he has developed a new technology, Own Your Unconscious, that enables people to access all their memories and share them with others. But not everyone is happy with this innovation. Anthropologist Miranda Kline, for example, is Bouton’s biggest critic. Chris Salazar, CEO of non-profit organisation Mondrian, wants to escape all data-gathering. Other key characters include Alfred and Miles Hollander and Miranda’s daughters, Lana and Melora. Their relations and friends come to life in a series of stories showing the consequences of the use of the internet and social media from different perspectives and at different times in the past and the future. In beautiful and versatile prose Jennifer Egan sketches a tangible image of a range of characters in a world in which human relations are more and more controlled by tech companies.