Similar to A Visit From the Goon Squad, and tying in with some of the characters from that novel, short stories interweave in a primarily near-futuristic world (a fairly wide gap from 90s to 30+ years in our current future) in which people can upload their consciousness, literalizing, with technology, the idea of a collective, or general intellect unit.

“Authenticity” in relation to such a technology is set up with the first couple stories, but then—like just about everything else—it becomes muddled, in favour instead of introducing a multitude of characters for a more complex plotting in how they interrelate and come together.

There is also some unconventional formatting occurring, as in the prequel. A chapter of two column, second-person thoughts from Lulu. Cyberneticly enhanced, citizen spy, she disassociates from herself as she attempts a mission. But the format doesn’t make that much sense under scrutiny. Nor does another chapter with algebra, only because it lacks detail to explain the significance. But worst of all (for me), was the networking email chain. Characters demonstrate their superficial and transactory natures as they attempt to get what they want. But the writing isn’t engaging at all. It’s boring on the page and far overlong in its point.

What I did like about it was the reexamination of Lulu as a whole, but it fumbles her overall story as she becomes no more realized and, in fact, only contextualized enough to become the embodiment of trauma. A similar to all the problems, which Goon Squad lacked: characterization, empathy and dignity in depictions, and a sense of time and place with the specificity embedded in the diction chosen. It’s not lost completely. One chapter, twin girls in a cuckoo narrative recounting their childhood with Lou from Goon Squad, and their mother, it exceptional. A perfect chapter, for me. This, by contrast, made the other chapters even worse, because she demonstrably can, and did not, exercise those often revelatory-like skills. Second best is a chapter focusing on Sasha’s son, Lincoln, the best story of the Goon Squad. But here we visit him in later life in a segregated working environment, essentially—atypical and typical workers in tech. While it mostly works, it does actually manage to not acknowledge the breadth of experience atypical thinkers have, lumping then altogether in broad ways. It feels a bit unintentionally cruel, I’m afraid.

That’s a through line when contrasting Goon Squad to Candy House: A lack of empathy toward the characters. It feels like a very large counterpoint, Tonally. All the white space; the interesting questions placed there previously, has more-or-less been coloured in. Sasha in later life. Everyone in later life, really. Music and connection to Sasha, one way or another, in Goon Squad brought them all together and had healing properties. This is pessimistic. There’s no specificity to the lens applied to them. The broad picture is the context, and it has people at their worst, accentuated by the technology… if Egan decides to have the tech make a presence in the chapter at all. More likely than not, it’s a plot point that makes the bringing together of them all a feat.

But it doesn’t actually manage to say anything that well. The primary success is the plotting, at the expense of developing an attachment to most all of them, and at expense, I think, of the actual themes it purports, outright states, to be About. It’s quite gauzy, in the end.