La casa de caramelo / The Candy House

La casa de caramelo, que culmina el ambicioso proyecto narrativo de Jennifer Egan iniciado con El tiempo es un canalla (Premio Pulitzer en 2011), cuenta la historia de Bix Bouton, un brillante empresario informático en horas bajas que acaba patentando una exitosa herramienta tecnológica que permite acceder a nuestros recuerdos y compartirlos, y que ha seducido a miles de personas. Con una asombrosa variedad de recursos narrativos, Egan pone el foco en el mundo digital y de las redes sociales y nos cuenta la historia de diversos personajes que buscan una conexión real en un mundo cada vez más digitalizado e hiperconectado. opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,” those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love. “A beautiful exploration of loss, memory, and history” , “this is minimalist maximalism. It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive”