A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Softcover

Eggers, Dave

3.69

180,428 ratings by Goodreads

9780330484558: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330484559 ISBN 13: 9780330484558

Publisher: Picador, 2001

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Dave Egger's parents died from cancer within a month of each other when he was 21 and his brother, Christopher, was seven. They left the Chicago suburb where they had grown up and moved to San Francisco. This book tells the story of their life together. 'Dave Eggers has written a superb memoir... The work soars because it is, simply and tremendously, an honest and moving account of one man's life. In the process, he reminds me that while the language and style of literature are always changing, it is forever about coming to terms with the timeless conflicts of the human heart...Like all authors, he uses his life and imagination to make sense of the world. Like the very best writers, he does not manufacture cheap answers.' The News & Observer 'The story is at once funny, tender, annoying and, yes, heartbreaking - an epic about family and how families fracture and fragment and somehow, through all the tumult and upset, manage to endure . . . A virtuosic piece of writing, a big, daring, manic-depressive stew of a book that noisily announces the debut of a talented - yes, staggeringly talented new writer' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 'Eggers is an original new voice, the real thing. When you read his extraordinary memoir you don't laugh, then cry, then laugh again; you somehow experience these emotions all at once - and powerfully' David Remnick 'The force and energy of this book could power a train' David Sedaris

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Review:

At the age of 22, Dave Eggers became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers. In the ensuing sibling division of labour, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his eight-year-old brother, Christopher. The two live together in semi-squalor, decaying food and sports equipment scattered about, while Eggers worries obsessively about child-welfare authorities, molesting babysitters and his own health. His child-rearing strategy swings between making his brother's upbringing fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. (Case in point: his idea of suitable bedtime reading is John Hersey's Hiroshima.) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is also, perhaps less successfully, about being young and hip and out to conquer the world (in an ironic, media-savvy, Generation-X way, naturally). In the early 1990s, Eggers was one of the founders of the very funny Might Magazine, and he spends a fair amount of time here on Might, the hipster culture of San Francisco's South Park and his own efforts to get on to MTV's Real World. This sort of thing doesn't age very well--but then, Eggers knows that. There's no criticism you can come up with that he hasn't put into A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius already. "The book thereafter is kind of uneven," he tells us regarding the contents after page 109, and while that's true, it's still uneven in a way that is funny and heartfelt and interesting. All this self-consciousness could have become unbearably arch. It's a testament to Eggers's skill as a writer--and to the heartbreaking particulars of his story--that it doesn't. Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history--so much so that he can't feel an emotion without the sense that it's already been felt for him. What may seem like postmodern noodling is really just Eggers writing about pain in the only honest way available to him. Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity, and--especially in its concluding pages--this memoir as metafiction is affecting beyond all rational explanation. --Mary Park

Review:

" This is a beautifully ragged, laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable book."

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