The Candy House
Autor Jennifer Eganen Limba Engleză Paperback – 7 mar 2023
Îl întâlnim pe Bix Bouton în 2010, un demi-zeu al tehnologiei aflat la apogeu, dar măcinat de o neliniște profundă și de foamea pentru o idee nouă care să îi redefinească imperiul. În viziunea lui Jennifer Egan, această scânteie apare sub forma unui concept radical: externalizarea memoriei umane. Putem afirma că The Candy House nu este doar un roman despre tehnologie, ci o autopsie a dorinței noastre fundamentale de conectare, realizată printr-o structură narativă care sfidează convențiile beletristicii tradiționale.
Considerăm că forța acestui volum rezidă în capacitatea autoarei de a jongla cu perspective multiple — de la persoana întâi plural la capitole întregi compuse din tweet-uri sau scrisori. Această polifonie creează un univers în care intimitatea devine monedă de schimb, iar amintirile pot fi accesate și partajate la fel de ușor ca un fișier digital. Ritmul narativ amintește de explorările conceptuale ale lui Jo Harkin în Tell Me an Ending, însă acolo unde Harkin se concentrează pe ștergerea traumelor, Egan explorează lăcomia de a poseda totalitatea experienței umane, transformând memoria într-o 'casă de turtă dulce' seducătoare, dar periculoasă.
Față de Manhattan Beach, unde autoarea ancora narațiunea într-un realism istoric sobru, The Candy House revine la spiritul experimental care i-a adus premiul Pulitzer pentru A Visit from the Goon Squad. Este un 'minimalism maximalist' în care destinele personajelor se intersectează prin fire invizibile, forțându-ne să ne întrebăm cine suntem atunci când tot ce am trăit devine bun public. Credem că această lucrare reprezintă apogeul stilistic al lui Egan, o demonstrație de virtuozitate care transformă complexitatea erei digitale într-o poveste profund umană despre pierdere și regăsire.
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 1472150945
Pagini: 352
Dimensiuni: 124 x 196 x 34 mm
Greutate: 0.28 kg
Editura: Little Brown
Colecția Corsair
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom
De ce să citești această carte
Recomandăm The Candy House celor care caută o literatură provocatoare, ce reflectă fragilitatea vieții private în era supravegherii digitale. Veți câștiga o perspectivă unică asupra modului în care tehnologia ne modelează identitatea și amintirile. Este o lectură esențială pentru fanii prozei experimentale care doresc să exploreze granița dintre autenticitatea umană și simularea digitală, oferind un amestec rar de rigoare intelectuală și emoție pură.
Despre autor
Jennifer Egan (născută în 1962) este una dintre cele mai influente voci ale literaturii americane contemporane. A obținut recunoașterea globală și premiul Pulitzer pentru ficțiune în 2011 cu romanul A Visit from the Goon Squad. Opera sa se distinge prin versatilitate, trecând de la thrillerul metafizic în The Keep la ficțiunea istorică premiată în Manhattan Beach. Fostă președintă a PEN America, Egan este recunoscută pentru modul în care analizează impactul timpului și al tehnologiei asupra conștiinței umane, fiind o prezență constantă în publicații precum The New Yorker și Harper's Magazine.
Descriere
'A complex, compelling read that showcases Egan's masterful storytelling' Time
It's 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He's forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalising" memory. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, Own Your Unconscious - that allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others - has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.
In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious
through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that
is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating tale of connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.
'A dazzling feat of literary construction' Vogue
'A clever, endlessly inventive exploration of our increasingly connected, surveilled society and the individual yearning for privacy and meaning' Guardian
Recenzii
'Fans of A Visit from the Goon Squad will not want to miss this new novel'
'A thrilling, endlessly stimulating work that demands to be read and reread'
'Egan returns to the fertile territory and characters of A Visit from the Goon Squad with an electrifying and shape-shifting story that one-ups its Pulitzer-winning predecessor'
'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'
'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'
'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'
'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'
Impressive
A dazzling feat of literary construction that belies the profound questions at its core: Does technology aid our sense of narrative or obscure it?
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
Inventive, effervescent...Egan plaits multiple narratives and techniques to underscore the manifold ways our own desires betray us in a brave new coded world
Very funny, penetrating, and impactful
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
[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
Haunting and often hilarious...a wondrous, riotously inventive work of speculative fiction
'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'
'Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving . . . Egan's writing - as always - is flawless, offering plenty to think about'
A staggering story in concept and thrilling in delivery
A Time Magazine Must-Read
It may be the smartest novel you've read all year
Mind-bogglingly clever
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 Candy House is just as compelling as its predecessor... some brilliantly executed scenes
At the level of the sentence, The Candy House zings
The Candy House is a bold, eclectic novel about the darker sides of the digital age. It's quietly captivating
a collection of exceptionally clever, sometimes funny short stories
This novel is a triumphant exploration of analogue versus digital, surveillance versus freedom, literature versus technology
Poignant and entertaining
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.
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
[A] colourful tale packed with poignancy... Egan has produced a powerful satire of social media culture while telling a deeply intimate story about family
Egan is one of the few names that, when linked with the expression 'novel of ideas', makes the heart sing rather than sink
Intellectual, philosophical, empathetic, moving - The Candy House further cements Egan's iconic status in contemporary literature
[An] inventive, intelligent novel... rooted in human stories
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
Exhilarating, deeply-pleasurable
Just as innovative, wise, funny and confounding as its predecessor.
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
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
[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 Candy House... offer[s] [a] powerful and nuanced critique of surveillance capitalism
Dazzling - and often very funny...Egan's style is compulsively readable
A clever, endlessly inventive exploration of our increasingly connected, surveilled society and the individual yearning for privacy and meaning
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"
Dazzling inventiveness
As thought-provoking as it is entertaining
'A complex, compelling read that showcases Egan's masterful storytelling' Time
It's 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He's forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalising" memory. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, Own Your Unconscious - that allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others - has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.
In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious
through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that
is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating tale of connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.
'A dazzling feat of literary construction' Vogue
'A clever, endlessly inventive exploration of our increasingly connected, surveilled society and the individual yearning for privacy and meaning' Guardian
Notă biografică
Jennifer Egan is the author of A Visit From The Goon Squad, The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her non-fiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her husband and sons in Brooklyn.