The Candy House

'A forceful, wonderfully fragmented novel of a terrifyingly possible future, as intellectually rigorous as it is formally impressive, and yet another monumental work from Egan'

Library Journal

'Playfully twists various narratives into a series of compelling interconnected vignettes, featuring many of the same characters from her award-laden 2010 novel. Ever the consummate storyteller and with a deft and powerful sense of characterisation, Egan is sure to have struck gold once more'

Harper's Bazaar

'A fast-paced polyvoiced romp through America in the grip of a sinister tech that allows others into your mind. EEK! Includes a dazzling novella Egan wrote'

Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

'Egan is skilful, even masterful, at writing in a variety of styles and formats to suit each character's voice, making the book that much more real and that much more affecting'

Bloomburg Businessweek

Impressive

A Life in Books

A dazzling feat of literary construction that belies the profound questions at its core: Does technology aid our sense of narrative or obscure it?

Vogue

You don't have to read A Visit From the Goon Squad to love this sibling novel to Egan's stellar hit...complex and intimate

Good Housekeeping

Inventive, effervescent...Egan plaits multiple narratives and techniques to underscore the manifold ways our own desires betray us in a brave new coded world

Oprah Daily

Very funny, penetrating, and impactful

Glamour

Tech guru Bix Bouton creates 'Own Your Unconscious,' a technology that allows users to access and share every memory they've ever had. It's a concept so killer, it's hard to believe such technology doesn't already exist

USA Today

[The Candy House] does what only the best and rarest books can: peel back the thin membrane of ordinary life, and find transcendence on the other side

Entertainment Weekly

Haunting and often hilarious...a wondrous, riotously inventive work of speculative fiction

Booklist, STARRED review

'Humming with a sustained brio, The Candy House is especially rewarding on a micro level. Even post-BLM, Egan felt free to write from the perspective of a black character, as she should feel free, and she's apt to get away with it, too. The chapter narrated by an autistic character is convincing. Egan is particularly good at evoking the insecure teenage girl. The writing is stylish: "a man of so few words that the occasional word he did utter had the cleaving finality of an ax splitting a log". The novel is spirited, playful, sometimes incisive. So who cares if I can't remember anyone's name'

Financial Times

'Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving . . . Egan's writing - as always - is flawless, offering plenty to think about'

The Book-It-List

A staggering story in concept and thrilling in delivery

Sainsbury's Magazine

A Time Magazine Must-Read

It may be the smartest novel you've read all year

LOVEBYLIFE

Mind-bogglingly clever

The Telegraph

Playful... By means probably even they cannot explain, novelists loot the experiences of others and distribute them equably with no reference to fancy uploading machines. And no one writing now does it more generously than Egan. I hope she wins another Pulitzer.

The Times

The Candy House is just as compelling as its predecessor... some brilliantly executed scenes

Evening Standard

At the level of the sentence, The Candy House zings

i News

The Candy House is a bold, eclectic novel about the darker sides of the digital age. It's quietly captivating

Evening Standard

a collection of exceptionally clever, sometimes funny short stories

The Spectator

This novel is a triumphant exploration of analogue versus digital, surveillance versus freedom, literature versus technology

Irish Times

Poignant and entertaining

The Independent

At its best it reads as if AM Homes, George Saunders and David Foster Wallace took turns in rewriting Middlemarch for our modern age. It's full of melancholic commentary about the human need for redemption, reinvention and reconciliation.

Sunday Times

This novel is a triumphant exploration of analogue versus digital, surveillance versus freedom, literature versus technology. Egan's virtuosity in style and form allows her to reflect life online, her characters changing with the fluidity of a status update

Idependent.ie

[A] colourful tale packed with poignancy... Egan has produced a powerful satire of social media culture while telling a deeply intimate story about family

Spears Wealth Management

Egan is one of the few names that, when linked with the expression 'novel of ideas', makes the heart sing rather than sink

Mail on Sunday

Intellectual, philosophical, empathetic, moving - The Candy House further cements Egan's iconic status in contemporary literature

The Irish Times

[An] inventive, intelligent novel... rooted in human stories

Good Housekeeping

Part social-media satire, part treatise on nostalgia and ownership of experience, The Candy House is experimental and intriguing, with each chapter often vastly different from the last... The Candy House is a tour-de-force, an exceptional book...bold and inventive...stunning

Taum Herald

Exhilarating, deeply-pleasurable

Prospect

Just as innovative, wise, funny and confounding as its predecessor.

Metro

A mind-bending book full of techies and artists and savvy entrepreneurs...Just as you're in deep with one story, another unfolds in what is a true box of candy of a book

The Gloss.ie

Everything [Egan] writes fizzes with ideas and feels wonderfully warm and engaging at the same time... [The Candy House] gives you more insight into how people tick than you'd get from six months' scrolling on social media

The Daily Mirror

[A] mind-bending book full of techies and artists and savvy entrepreneurs catching various waves as the action moves from the late 1960s to the 2030s...Just as you're in deep with one story, another unfolds in what is a true box of candy of a book

The Gloss

The Candy House... offer[s] [a] powerful and nuanced critique of surveillance capitalism

The Guardian

Dazzling - and often very funny...Egan's style is compulsively readable

The Tablet

A clever, endlessly inventive exploration of our increasingly connected, surveilled society and the individual yearning for privacy and meaning

Guardian

For all its fluency in the languages of gaming, addiction and tech, this is a social novel with numerous characters and perspectives; a kind of 21st-century "Middlemarch"

Economist, Book of the Year 2022

Dazzling inventiveness

Guardian, Book of the Year 2022

As thought-provoking as it is entertaining

The Irish Times, A Best Book of 2022