Elsewhere, though, there are jolts of neon futurism. A 50-page chapter, which makes up nearly one-sixth of the novel, is composed entirely of snarky, gossipy emails being shared among a subset of the characters, replete with all the Shakespearean drama and petty pleasures of bcc and fwd.
She achieves some of her world-building through scenes of pure digital realism in the parlance of that space, Egan reads us for filth. Perhaps this is why in her new novel Egan chooses to revel in the addictive delights of being online-an experience way more fun that any of us will admit.
Such are the disappointments of our age, where so much loses its magic IRL. I checked back in with that landlord, and it turns out he was talking about someone else entirely. A small, mundane detail, namely that I found the listing online, would have tied it up in a bow, a plot point coming full circle, waiting for a critic to underline or scribble a note in the margins, something about “the intimacy of strangers in the digital age.” Had I been in the very rooms where the author conceived these pages I was now tasked with evaluating? It was as if I had been transported into one of Egan’s novels my humble apartment search now part of a grand plot testifying to the interconnected fabric of human existence. I hadn’t given it much thought until recently, when I was assigned to review The Candy House, her new novel. Based on various descriptors, I was sure it had to be Jennifer Egan, who had just been teaching at a nearby college. I told him I was a journalist, and he said another writer used to rent this place. I looked into her shower, checked the knobs on her stove, walked the path from the front door to the garage where the washer and dryer were kept. A few years ago, I found myself in a stranger’s home when she was not there.
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