The Candy House by Jennifer Egan: A review

 

Jennifer Egan's latest is billed as a sequel to A Visit From the Good Squad which I read way back in 2013. A lot of books have flowed over the rocks of my brain since then, so I don't remember the specifics of that book as well as I might, but I do remember that I liked it. In fact, I've never read a book by Egan that I didn't like. And that includes The Candy House. 

This one is a bit difficult to describe. It is all about memory and the desire for privacy in a world where so much of our lives is open to the public. We can come to feel that our lives are no longer our own but are part of the shared memories of everyone around us. As I say, a bit difficult to describe or wrap our heads around.

The time is 2010 and Bix Bouton is a successful tech entrepreneur on the lookout for the next big thing. A conversation with some Columbia professors puts him on the track of an idea for downloading or externalizing memory. The technology that he creates to make that germ of an idea a reality allows an individual access to every memory he or she has ever had as well as the ability to share those memories and the memories of others. Thus, "Own Your Unconscious" is born.

The technology becomes wildly popular with the public. Egan then shows us the potential consequences of the system through the lives of many disparate characters over decades. She does this in a number of different styles throughout the various chapters. One chapter, for example, is comprised of nothing but tweets! It's certainly a creative, imaginative way of developing a theme and telling the story. 

Through this imagined technology, one is able to access and remember the memories of others: one's forebears, for example. What could possibly go wrong with that? Furthermore, she imagines a system of "counters" who track and exploit the desires of others as they are identified in memories. In her world, there are also "eluders," those who understand the price of becoming involved in "Own Your Unconscious" and refuse to participate. 

The world that she imagines has social media and technology as an integral part of the living environment. One review of the book that I remember described it as the "soundtrack" of our lives and that seems particularly apt. And what if one doesn't want one's memories to become a part of this global consciousness? Can one refuse to participate? Can one disown one's consciousness and one's memories? As much as an exploration of the possibilities of reliving the memories of others, Egan's book seems to be a warning of the dangers of such sharing. In the end, although we long for connection with others, we also cherish our privacy. It is, after all, the essence of what makes us us.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars  

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan: A review

Jennifer Egan has given us something completely different this time. After A Visit from the Goon Squad, her multi-award winning book of 2011, we who loved that book might have expected some sort of futuristic science fiction opus as her next work. Instead, she has chosen to go back in time.

She has written a historical fiction work, one set during the World War II period. Such a traditional novel may seem a great departure from Goon Squad and it is. But it still features the same inventive attention to language and a setting that is so fully imagined and described that the reader feels as though she's walking along that beach, working in that wartime shipyard, diving alongside the ships being built in that shipyard.

The main protagonist here is Anna Kerrigan whom we meet as an eleven-year-old girl in 1934. She is with her father, Eddie, as he meets with a gentleman gangster named Dexter Styles on Manhattan Beach. Eddie is seeking a way to make more money to support his wife and two daughters, the younger of whom is severely disabled and needs an expensive wheelchair.

Styles apparently takes Eddie on as a bag man for his "business" but soon enough Eddie disappears, leaving Anna, her mother, and her sister whom they both adore.

Anna grows up and World War II comes along to interfere with her plans. She ends up working at the shipyard in service to the war effort, but her great dream is to become a diver. The first woman diver to work in the Naval Yards.

I was fascinated by Egan's descriptions of the various subcultures in a New York City that has been radically transformed by the entry into World War II. From the hierarchies of the crime syndicate of which Dexter Styles is a part, to the uppermost tier of New York society that his wife comes from, and the world of the military and of commercial diving where Anna battles her way through all the obstacles thrown up by society to prevent a woman from becoming a full participant. 

The fates of Anna, Eddie, and Dexter are inextricably intertwined from that day back in 1934 when they first met on Manhattan Beach and those connections continue to advance the story. Each of these characters has his or her secrets and their secrets shape who the characters are and how they interact with the world.

The novel has other settings besides New York, but, primarily, it is a novel of that great city in that period. We visit its tenements, its highbrow retreats, its nightclubs; but mostly we visit its harbors, the port of New York. Our focus is on the sea as a workplace and as a gateway.

We see the freighters docked at the piers and the battleships being built at the Brooklyn Naval Yards. We see that the local fisheries and oyster beds of the time are thriving, and the society of the area is a rich mix of all who participate in these activities and those who serve their needs. Anna comes of age in this society and we experience it through her.

Egan has given us a rich portrayal of life in this era with an emphasis on the strictures with which young women had to contend in order to participate fully in that life. I loved reading about Anna and I can't think of one negative thing to say about Egan's book.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan: A review

Is A Visit from the Goon Squad really a novel or is it a collection of linked stories? It is extremely hard to classify or to summarize this convoluted exercise in story-telling. In the end though, I think the category hardly matters. Whatever you call it, it's a great read.

These are stories about the passage of time and how our lives never seem to work out the way we thought they would. "Goon," in Jennifer Egan's lexicon, means time. We all receive visits from the "Goon Squad" every day, every year, even if we are oblivious to those visits.

One of the many quirky things about this book is its portrayal of time. The action takes place over a period of forty years or so, but the narrative jumps forward and backward with ease and without warning. When you start reading a chapter, it isn't always clear at first just what time period you are in, but just keep reading. Eventually you'll get it.

A second quirkiness is the long list of protagonists who get to narrate the story from their point of view. The chapters (stories?) jump from one protagonist to another, but again, keep reading. After a while you'll find that this loose skein of narratives actually holds together. The pattern becomes clear. Music is woven through all the stories as a unifying theme and one might say that they exhibit perfect pitch.

Two characters who appear in the first chapter and reappear in the points of view of other protagonists throughout the book are music executive Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha. We soon learn that these characters, as indeed all of the book's characters, have their dark side, but one feels that Egan has an affection for her characters and she views their...um...eccentricities not unsympathetically and the reader tends to accept her view of them.

I've seen some reviews of this book which compare it to a Dickensian tale and I can see that. The multiplicity of characters, the complexity of their relationships, and their passage through time, as well as their changes through time, could well remind one of Dickens. Also Proust, for these characters are haunted by remembrance of things past.

Of course, Proust or Dickens never wrote a chapter in PowerPoint presentation format, but then maybe they would have if PowerPoint had been around in their day. That chapter, written in a somewhat dystopian future time by Sasha's teenage daughter, was, for me, one of the most moving in the book. I must admit I approached it warily, but after a few pages, it just seemed natural, as if that particular story could not have been told any other way.

Kids and their points of view are woven in the pattern throughout the book. These kids are invariably sharp observers and just as sharp judges of their parents and other adults. They are extremely savvy about the digital age in a way that their parents never can be. 

This is particularly true of the kids that appear in the dystopian future that is the setting of the latter chapters. Evans refers to the end of fifteen years of war that produced a baby boom and now these gadget-loving kids are everywhere and seem to be propelling the culture forward in an altogether new direction. 

The individual stories told here are sometimes sad, even tragic, but also often darkly funny. Egan writes with a light touch, just a bit of satire seeping from around the edges. Overall, the book has a somewhat bittersweet quality to it as you might expect of a book about the passage of time and the ravages it inflicts on our lives and on our images of ourselves. 

It is not the easiest book to read, just because of its complicated structure, but it is well worth the effort. I'm glad I stuck with it!