In Egan’s version of our current, and future, reality, a tech genius named Bix Bouton has invented a product called “Own Your Unconscious,” which has found a way for people to revisit memories they’ve forgotten. The tech industry is greedy, too, but it wants to get not only into your wallet but also your head, sometimes quite literally. The music biz may be crass, showy, and greedy, but it basically wants people to have a good time. The difference between the two industries partly accounts for the different vibes of these sibling novels. Instead of zeroing in on the music business as its hub, The Candy House features the technology industry that now saturates every fiber of our lives. However, just as the world itself has become darker and more contentious since 2010, the world of The Candy House is more sober than Goon Squad’s rock and roll heart. Egan’s prose is as lithe and knowing as ever, tender toward human folly, but highly aware of how flawed we all are.

Like Goon Squad, The Candy House is a collage of interconnected characters and stories told in diverse forms that follow their own wayward paths. The music industry pros Bennie Salazar and Lou wander through as well, along with various of their respective children from several marriages.

You’ll cross paths with Sasha’s husband, Drew her son, Lincoln, who falls somewhere on the autism spectrum and her art history professor uncle, Ted.

You’ll see kleptomaniac Sasha again, who has now transformed her criminality into art. The two books are connected loosely, like wildflowers sown in the same field. Fans of Jennifer Egan’s breakout hit and Pulitzer Prize-winning 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad will be thrilled to know that its “sibling novel,” The Candy House, is here at last.

The candy house jennifer egan