“Nothing is free! Only children expect otherwise even as myths and fairy tales warn us: Rumpelstiltskin, King Midas, Handsel and Gretel. Never trust a candy house! It was only a matter of time before someone made them pay for what they thought they were getting for free.”
Jennifer Egan, The Candy House
Jennifer Egan revisits several characters from her 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning, genre bending novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. Longlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, The Candy House was included in the New York Times Top Ten Books of 2022, as well as Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten Works of Fiction published in 2022.
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.
Jennifer Egan is the author of six previous books of fiction: Manhattan Beach, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Keep; the story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, McSweeney’s, and The New York Times Magazine.
More about Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan’s website
Simon & Schuster Reading Group Guide
The New Yorker, March 12, 2023
Jennifer Egan’s Disciplined Restlessness
Literary Hub, April 25, 2023
Jennifer Egan on the Fascinating Interactions Between Technology and Inner Life
“A fast-paced polyvoiced romp thru America in the grip of a sinister tech that allows others into your mind. EEK!”
MARGARET ATWOOD, AUTHOR OF THE HANDMAID’S TALE AND THE TESTAMENTS
Books
Copies of The Candy House , along with other titles by Jennifer Egan, are available from White Whale Bookstore.