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Egan, Jennifer. The Candy House. Scribner. Apr. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781476716763. $27. LITERARY

In 2010, genius techie Bix Bouton has his own company but is searching for a surefire new idea when he learns about a Columbia professor who’s experimenting with downloading, or “externalizing,” memory. Flash forward a decade, and Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious, allows users to access all their own memories and share them with others. In the spliced-narrative structure that characterized her Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan shows readers what the consequences of such technology might be as she takes us from character to character, who mostly boldly embrace Own Your Unconscious but sometimes reject it. What results is an exploration of what connection really means. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

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