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jeannemixon 's review for:
The Candy House
by Jennifer Egan
A dystopian science fiction novel or a metaphor for the dangers of modern online social life. People are able to upload everything about themselves into a community cloud -- all their memories, feelings, inner thoughts -- which is viewable by anyone. The danger is of course a complete loss of privacy and too much information everywhere. I liked the part where someone, for reasons that are unclear, develops an algorithmic way of describing an event that is a common storytelling element:
"Why ... had Chris algebraized "A Drink In The Face" -- a(+drink) x (action of throwing drink) = a(-drink) + i/2 -- making "i" the protagonist, the "target" of the hurled drink rather than the hurler? ... he explained to the group that a drink-hurling protagonist belonged to a different story block, "Hero Delivers Comeuppance to Perennial Jerk," which Chris had algebraized several months back."
As he becomes alienated from his place of work due to a mysterious event that is never explained, he is only able to describe it in algebraic symbolic logic code. It is beautiful but I can't reproduce it here. And since symbolic logic is based on reducing words to symbols, it is perfect.
I also love the idea of a writer seeing story lines and scenarios as algebraized blocks to be inserted. It seems so appropriate.
Similarly I really like when the junky Roxy describes her motivations and actions in terms of D&D character abilities. "Because Roxy is good at Feign Oblivion, another Former Junkie skill, people tend not to guard their words around her. While employing Apparent Inattention and Vacant Stare, she has overheard Chris on the phone ..." giving her normal covert activities scoring drugs and spying on people an otherworldly distance which is how she sees life after she's been exposed to D&D.
There are other stories about the loss of privacy due to corporate surveillance and the fear of a loss of privacy. A spy in one story who does covert operations for an unnamed entity has parts of her body replaced with mechanical devices. Her eye becomes a camera and her eyebrow triggers a flash; she has a flash drive implanted between the little and next toe on her right foot. As the story goes on, more and more parts of her are revealed to be Get Smart style implants. Mechanical worms have been implanted in various people's brains to surveil their relatives through their eyes. and the fear of the mechanical worms is as bad as the existence of the worms themselves I wish there had been more of this. Sort of reminded me of Jennifer Government.
So I was left wishing there had been more of the interesting wordplay/symbolic logic play and spyware and less of the trying to figure out which character was related to who how. I spent a lot of time I didn't want to flipping backwards and forwards trying to remember how this person was related to or knew that one when I really wanted to read more about story blocks and wetware. Too much of the story was untold or just wasn't very interesting or required too much work to figure out.
"Why ... had Chris algebraized "A Drink In The Face" -- a(+drink) x (action of throwing drink) = a(-drink) + i/2 -- making "i" the protagonist, the "target" of the hurled drink rather than the hurler? ... he explained to the group that a drink-hurling protagonist belonged to a different story block, "Hero Delivers Comeuppance to Perennial Jerk," which Chris had algebraized several months back."
As he becomes alienated from his place of work due to a mysterious event that is never explained, he is only able to describe it in algebraic symbolic logic code. It is beautiful but I can't reproduce it here. And since symbolic logic is based on reducing words to symbols, it is perfect.
I also love the idea of a writer seeing story lines and scenarios as algebraized blocks to be inserted. It seems so appropriate.
Similarly I really like when the junky Roxy describes her motivations and actions in terms of D&D character abilities. "Because Roxy is good at Feign Oblivion, another Former Junkie skill, people tend not to guard their words around her. While employing Apparent Inattention and Vacant Stare, she has overheard Chris on the phone ..." giving her normal covert activities scoring drugs and spying on people an otherworldly distance which is how she sees life after she's been exposed to D&D.
There are other stories about the loss of privacy due to corporate surveillance and the fear of a loss of privacy. A spy in one story who does covert operations for an unnamed entity has parts of her body replaced with mechanical devices. Her eye becomes a camera and her eyebrow triggers a flash; she has a flash drive implanted between the little and next toe on her right foot. As the story goes on, more and more parts of her are revealed to be Get Smart style implants. Mechanical worms have been implanted in various people's brains to surveil their relatives through their eyes. and the fear of the mechanical worms is as bad as the existence of the worms themselves I wish there had been more of this. Sort of reminded me of Jennifer Government.
So I was left wishing there had been more of the interesting wordplay/symbolic logic play and spyware and less of the trying to figure out which character was related to who how. I spent a lot of time I didn't want to flipping backwards and forwards trying to remember how this person was related to or knew that one when I really wanted to read more about story blocks and wetware. Too much of the story was untold or just wasn't very interesting or required too much work to figure out.