Book review | When you can upload your own consciousness to the cloud – and also access the memories of others

Novel

Jennifer Egan: The Candy House. Finnish: Helene Bützow. Oak. 407 pp.

American by Jennifer Egan a novel A Visit from the Goon Squad was considered in 2010 as the literature of the future. In it, different narrative techniques, text genres and perspectives crossed paths in a fresh way. The Pulitzer Prize-winning work was translated into Finnish in 2012 under the title Aika suuri hämäys.

In the book, the characters rotated from one chapter to another so that the side characters became the main characters in turn. In Egan’s latest Gingerbread housein the novel Quite a big blur side characters become main characters and main characters are left aside.

Novels are siblings. Even the gingerbread house the chapters are like short stories and there are again special narrative techniques. One chapter consists of emails. However, the glamor has gone from the experiments. The timeline of events stretches from the 1960s to the 2030s.

Speculative the central theme of the fiction is seeking connection with others. On the one hand, technology enables connection, on the other hand, it fetters.

Anthropologist Miranda Kline investigates what makes people trust and bond with each other in the Brazilian rainforest. Kline’s book Models of charm presents formulas that can be used to predict people’s preferences. Bix Bouton applies Kline’s algorithms in his social media company Mandala, and shoots like a rocket to success.

With Mandala’s OmaAlitajunta service, you can connect to the collective consciousness. “By uploading all or part of one’s memory to the Internet, one became equally involved in the anonymous thoughts and memories of other people, whether they were alive or dead.”

People delve into memories to find explanations for past mysteries. Miranda Kline’s daughter wants to know why her father didn’t want her on his trips when she was six years old. It turns out that the father and the group of friends had a better time in the company of hippies and marijuana.

A know-it-all technology can be used as a shortcut to someone’s heart. Mandala’s data analyst thinks about how to make his colleague M fall in love with him.

“I see a blue plush hippo at Walmart and think: Maybe this is x, an unknown factor that will win M’s love.”

A strange little service is still used for entertainment purposes only.

With the help of OmaAlitajunna, forgotten atrocities are revealed. Abusers receive their convictions when the victims’ externalized memories are presented as evidence in court. The flip side, technology’s revenge, are the side effects.

The title of the book comes from Hannus and Kertus: never trust a gingerbread house!

“We were so enraptured by the new revealing freedom that no one really realized what we were giving up by sharing the entire content of our minds online.”

Are we about to open Pandora’s box, the book ponders.

Isn’t it like this criticism is not only outdated but also diluted? Gingerbread house is like dystopian Black Mirror -series episode, but in a duller and lighter version.

Controlling the collective consciousness naturally creates a counter-movement. Some escape from their Subconscious, others seek authenticity.

In the funniest chapter, the morbid pursuit of authenticity is ironized. Alfred has an obsession with authenticity. Even as a child, he reacted aggressively to the “pretending” of TV shows. The man tests people by shouting in public places, looking for “genuine human reactions instead of the fake crap we offer each other every day”.

Gingerbread house is Pretty big blur more hopeful. People learn about themselves and others, get new beginnings, make reconciliations.

The pill crosser causes a car accident that results in the mistress’s leg being amputated. On a hot air balloon ride, a man jumps over the edge, but a friend saves him. The man pulls himself together and changes the direction of his life.

In another story, a sniper who has boiled himself hard decides not to fire his gun. He begins to offer people comfort.

Sentimentality stinks. Although a little less than the author’s previous one, in Manhattan Beach.

Criticisms of the work have not been as unreservedly positive as with the hit book. I agree with the following.

of The Spectator Diana Hendry according to which nothing is deepened. There are so many characters that you can’t remember them, let alone care about them.

Egan’s uniquely twisted narrative structure, as if playing jazz standards in brilliant arrangements, now sounds manic and shallow, sped-up muzak, The Atlantic Mark Greif write. It’s as if the author has streamlined his special technique for those with reduced attention spans.

The former fits The New Republic by Jennifer Wilson considering that Gingerbread house is a meta novel about a metaverse: as if the whole of society had been transferred to the pages of a book.

“Without a story, everything is just information”, reads one of the key phrases of the work. The book really talks about people, too much and in an unrelated way.

The novel has ambition, but no charm that entices you to read.