The Candy House: A Novel

We had each other, and in each other we had our mother.

I’m itching to get to my medical clinic, where there’s always more to do and it always matters. But I’ve learned to resist that impulse.

a symbiosis that made her old life obsolete, had been temporary.

But I hadn’t counted on the circularity of life: the way it delivers us, with age, back to the beginning.

Here was his father’s parting gift: a galaxy of human lives hurtling toward his curiosity. From a distance they faded into uniformity, but they were moving, each propelled by a singular force that was inexhaustible. The collective. He was feeling the collective without any machinery at all. And its stories, infinite and particular, would be his to

She struggles to believe that Piers is as real as she is—as full of thoughts and memories and feelings.

Roxy marvels at the deep absorption of the players, who never seem impatient. It’s as if the rest of life has slowed to match the pace of the game.

But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it’s all just information.