When the Adderall made me jangly, I'd calm down with Xanax or Percocet in the afternoon before knocking myself out with more sleeping pills at bedtime. I started taking sleeping pills at night and Adderall in the morning to get me going-and eventually throughout the day to keep me sharp. But Polly was colicky, and by then I was the youngest partner in my law firm's history, and the workload was crushing. I bridged the gaps with peanut butter, which I ate by the jar, and teenage energy. In high school, my insomnia had made it possible to excel academically while also playing three varsity sports, working for a tree pruning company, and pleasing a finicky girlfriend. But certain things, like sleep, resist rigid control. Every move I made was aimed at harrying myself toward greater excellence. If anything can be said in defense of the person I was in 2008, the year Sasha made amends and Polly was born-the year I turned thirty-it can be only that I was least forgiving of myself. Now, she's written a sequel, "The Candy House," in which a tech giant develops the means for users to externalize and share every memory they're ever had. Jennifer Egan's 2010 novel "A Visit From the Goon Squad" earned her the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
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