RFBC Show Notes: The Candy House (and a link to the show)
Maybe you’ve read Jennifer Egan’s big new novel The Candy House and you’re interested in what a few other good readers thought of it. If so, you’re in luck: Episode 2 of Radio Free Book Club is streaming on Mixcloud right now. (If not, you should know there are spoilers aplenty—on the show and in this post. Come back after you’ve read it.)
Show notes:
The RFBC Crew for our second show was Indianapolis writer Ken Honeywell; digital strategist and Goodreads superstar Christine Hudson; marketing writer extraordinaire Traci Cumbay; and teacher/editor/author/Afrofuturist Maurice Broaddus. Once again, the show was recorded at Listen Hear in Indianapolis, and our engineer and editor — and musical genius — was the inimitable Oreo Jones.
We had different starting points. Jennifer Egan has described The Candy House as a “sibling novel” to her Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. Ken had read Goon Squad years ago and reread it before rereading The Candy House. Traci hadn’t read Goon Squad in a decade. Christine read them back to back, both for the first time. Maurice listened to the audiobook, having never read Goon Squad.
What was it all about, anyway? We all agreed: identity and authenticity. And connections — all those connections among a very disparate group of people, all of whom are the protagonists of their own lives. Their own perceptions of themselves and each other shift over time, as well — especially when considered in conjunction with Goon Squad. It’s another novel without a single protagonist, and that’s quite a feat in itself.
Which stories did we love? Over the course of our discussion, nearly every story in the book was mentioned. Traci and Christine mentioned “Rhyme Scheme,” Lincoln the counter’s story. Maurice mentioned “Case Study: No One Got Hurt,” the story of Alfred Hollander, the screamer—narrated by Rebecca from “The Affinity Charm—but especially loved “Lulu the Spy, 2032, which was a pretty conventional spy story told in what is essentially a list of instructions. Christine raved about “See Below,” the story told in a long, forking series of emails that tied together characters and plot points from across the two novels. Ken brought up “A Journey/A Stranger Comes to Town,” co-narrated by Miles and Drew, and being powerfully moving. We mentioned “i, the Protagonist,” “The Perimeter: After,” “The Perimeter: Before,” “Eureka Gold,” and others as being pretty darn great. We all loved Noreen.
Which stories did we not love? None of us cared much for “The Affinity Charm.” We like Bix.
Did the “gimmick” chapters work? Yep. They sure did. We agreed that, as Traci said, “She pulls off the storytelling so well that I’m willing to go on that ride with her.”
A question Maurice hates, but answered anyway: Is it science fiction? We wanted our resident science fiction author to weigh in. In fairness, we weren’t asking whether the science held up, or if it was fantasy or speculative fiction or some other genre or sub-genre: We just wanted to know whether it belonged in the science fiction section of the bookstore, as opposed to the mainstream section where it typically resided thanks to Egan’s literary reputation. Maurice said yes: The Candy House is science fiction.
Could we resist the allure of Own Your Unconscious? Collective Consciousness? Maurice would be the first in line. Christine, Traci, and Ken think they would be eluders. We were uncertain about the tech, though. Would we experience events in our lives as they happened, or our interpretations of events over time? Drew put his finger on the problem with regard to Mandala’s MemoryShop, with which you can erase bad memories: “But how can I erase awareness that has permeated very minute of my life since the event itself? I’d have to erase the life I’ve built, and I can’t. I love it all too much.”
What were our favorite word casings? That is, words that have lost all meaning outside of quotation marks? Authenticity. Friend. Real. Story. Change. Quality. Love. Conversation. Community. Storytelling. Literally.
That ending! Christine loved it. Traci felt a little betrayed by the intrusion of the author. Ken admired the idea that “the secret to a happy ending is knowing when to walk away,” and declared it happy. Maurice pronounced it “an ending.”
Would we recommend it? It was unanimous: Yes, we would. We all enjoyed it, and the three of us who’d read A Visit from the Good Squad recommended reading that one, too; in fact Christine preferred Good Squad to The Candy House.
Bonus recommendations: Christine recommended Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Traci recommended Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Maurice (at Ken’s insistence) recommended his own his own Sweep of Stars. Ken recommended The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara.
Next month: We’ll be book clubbing Julia May Jonas’s sexy campus novel Vladimir. Here’s hoping you’ll join us!
