| A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 907 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1604
Category: Book
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Label: Vintage
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0375725784
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.92092
EAN: 9780375725784
ASIN: 0375725784
Publication Date: February 13, 2001
Release Date: February 13, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. The Vintage edition includes a new appendix by the author.
Amazon.com
Dave Eggers is a terrifically talented writer; don't hold his cleverness against him. What to make of a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story? For starters, there's a good bit of staggering genius before you even get to the true story, including a preface, a list of "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book," and a 20-page acknowledgements section complete with special mail-in offer, flow chart of the book's themes, and a lovely pen-and-ink drawing of a stapler (helpfully labeled "Here is a drawing of a stapler:"). But on to the true story. At the age of 22, 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 labor, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-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 manically fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. (Case in point: his idea of suitable bedtime reading is John Hersey's Hiroshima.) The book is also, perhaps less successfully, about being young and hip and out to conquer the world (in an ironic, media-savvy, Gen-X way, naturally). In the early '90s, 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.H.W.O.S.G. 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. Currently the editor of the footnote-and-marginalia-intensive journal McSweeney's (the last issue featured an entire story by David Foster Wallace printed tinily on its spine), 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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 902 more reviews...
 Emotionally evocative, but wordy August 23, 2008
I bought this book because of all the rave reviews from critics and the because it was a Pulitzer finalist. I read the first one-third of the story and really enjoyed his candid writing style. I am from the Bay Area and too lost my mother at an early age, so I really related to both his accounts of Berkeley/SF life and people, as well as grieving the loss of a parent at a young age. His anger toward the insensitivity of others was frank. His urgency to protect his little brother from the realities of death and loss are memorable. His writing style is both vivid and candid, however very very detailed. At first this was interesting and kept my attention, but after the first 5 chapters or so, was a slow moving book. I found myself skipping chapters. Overall a decent read though.
 Hyperboles Aside; Read It and See... July 28, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
"Well they say its kind of frightening how this younger generation swings, You know its more than just some new sensation... At an early age he hits the streets, wind up tied with who he meets / You know its more than just an aggravation." --David Lee Roth, from Van Halen's "The Cradle Will Rock," from their seminal 1980 work "Women and Children First"
So it may be a little ridiculous starting off a literary review with some credible quasi-fiction book like Eggers, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," (heretoforeafter referred to as AHWOSG) but there is something in it that is pertinent, something I believe Eggers with his way of writing what is available to his mind at the moment, though seemingly irrelevant, would approve of. So to title your debut book, AHWOSG, borders on the absurd side of hyperboles, in the end when one is finished reading, this almost can't put down work...is not a far-off description. It's that good my friends, read on and you may be convinced.
So back to David Lee Roth waxing poetic and philosophical, which are two descriptors rarely associated with the lyrical works of Van Halen, Roth years. What AHWOSG does, less concisely mind you, is capture a voice of a generation. The book does a lot of things, but this summing up of the Gen Y, the Internet Generation, or better yet, The YouTube Generation's media savvy need for an audience on a broad scale seems to be something Eggers does most successfully, Is it a generational treatise? Perhaps not quite that, because after all, can you capture in a work of literature all the voices, feelings, experiences of a whole generation. Probably not. But as Eggers proves, you can come pretty darn close.
Just get a gander at this writing, before you go on to purchase this book (or however in your corner of the world you acquire fiction to consume), "What does it take to show you mf's, what does it freakin' take what do you want how much do you want because I am willing and I'll stand before you and I'll raise my arms and give you my chest and throat and wait, and I've been so old for so long, for you, for you, I want it fast and right through me---- Oh do it, do it, you mf's, do it do it you f's finally, finally, finally." That's the last passage from AHWOSG and it caps off a really really moving read. Those are the words from an author that really really craves an audience. And so it may be with a generation brought up on an expectation that it just isn't the "15 minutes of fame," we are all seeking and due...but the way one connects is through mass media. A mass audience validates ones existence or at the very least, helps them deal with any human pain they may be suffering in the present.
Eggers, granted, has a lot of reasons to be experiencing angst. Whereas the Gen X'ers, my generation, are thought of as largely cynical with no clear valid reason to cop that permanent attitude, Egger's generation has plently of reason to be dislocated and distraught, the music of Radiohead only one small cultural influencer, not to mention 9/11, wars, real wars, not some mamby pamby skirmishes in Grenada and The Falklands. This is the generation that could very well go down in history as the Next Great Generation, following in the footsteps of the boomers who saved the world from certain peril during War War II.
What is Eggers' AHWOSG like you may want to know? After all why would you still be reading my random stream-of-consciousness review...still? It's about loss, staggering loss. It's about coming of age prematurely when one's parents pass at age 22, leading to the taking on of guardianship for your younger high school aged brother. It's about the search for meaning in one's life through work, friends and family. It's about life, man, just read it and get back out there living it.
To go on further may dilute any type of message I'm trying to send you with this review. What I'd like to do is just to convince you to read this book. You may in some small way find yourself looking at your own life, in light to Eggers', differently. You may in some larger way get to know and understand a generation, perhaps your own, perhaps someone elses. What you won't get from AHWOSG is boredom. And in a life, the pursuit of entertainment and moreso engagement, seems a worthwhile cause, if only to enlighten and give cause to live. ...mmw
 The whole is better than some parts. July 27, 2008
The book as a whole is much better than some of the parts. Dave Eggers has written a raw, emotional memoir of the years immediately following the death of both parents. He becomes the guardian of a younger brother and is also trying to begin his own career as a writer. Eggers is witty, sarcastic, pretenious and possibly genius, but this book was not easy for me to read. Some parts were laugh out loud funny. Some were gut-wrenchingly brutal. Some were loving, poignant and sad. Then, there were parts that I felt I would never get through and it wasn't until I was finished that I really appreciated what Eggers had accomplished. Several times in telling his story, Eggers goes off on narrative tangents that don't really move the story. These border on stream of conscienciousness, but are just hard to follow, as are some sections of dialogue. (I was torn between 3 or 4 stars, because it was just hard to get through at times.)
So why does this book have such high praise? Eggers is funny and honest. This memoir succeeds in giving an clear picture of one young adult's life and his thoughts as he strives to deal with his grief, become a parent to his much younger brother and carve out a successful career as writer and publisher. Eggers was idealistic enough to think he could do just that. I found myself wanting to like this book because of what Eggers was trying to accomplish.
If you pick up this book and make it through the preface and first chapter (it may not be easy), go ahead and finish. I think you will be glad you did. Then check out Eggers work as a philanthropist and teacher-at-large. Now that deserves high praise indeed!
 thumbs down July 21, 2008
the first 50 pages or so are promising. it seems like it is going to be a quirky, honest depiction of this young man's life after his parents die and he becomes the guardian of his young brother. and as long as he stays with that, the story is compelling. unfortunately, most of the book is full of random stories about his uninteresting life told in such a self-conciously, self centered way. every bad thing that happens to anyone he has ever met manages to be completely about him. he thinks he's infinitely more clever than the rest of the world and more entitled to attention and he acknowledges this. it's as if he thinks that by admitting his faults, the reader no longer has the right to be annoyed by them. but they do and i was. the writing is scattered and lazy and i don't know how it got published.
starts off wonderful, ends up lost July 3, 2008
My good friend highly recommended this book for me to read last summer, citing Dave Eggers as his hero, and so I eagerly picked this up and delved into a story of a great sibling relationship in the wake of a tragedy.
As a 21 year old college student about to graduate, you would think that I would be obssessed with this work, completely representing my generation. And indeed, it succeeded in that. The whole living situation in the Bay Area of California was awesome, and his whole mantra of being young and free in America was great too, and the book should have ended at that. I should warn you that this is a memoir, so his ego is immensely represented as him being basically a self-absorbed Berkeley young intellectual. I could ramble on and on about this book and why I wouldn't rate it higher, but I'll just get to the point.
The first half is simply enjoyable to read with the whole relationship with his brother, dealing with the loss of parents (whom he seemingly never cared for), and with his sister being driven in law school and eventually marrying. His emotions are presented well with his relationships in this memoir, and then suddenly, as if out of the blue, Toph (his brother) is never mentioned again. The second half of the book is about his magazine and this MTV interview that never seems to end. It was so boring and meaningless. I want to read about you and your brother and your lives, not about some stupid magazine and a pretentious MTV real world interview to nowhere.
Overall, I get what he's saying, and it is a good message. Namely, family comes first but it is great to be young and free in America in your 20's, of course if only brought up by wealthy suburban Chicago parents. About 90% of America can't afford to rent his house that he did in the Berkeley hills with views of SF bay and not a job in site. It is a good book and I enjoyed it, but the Pulitzer Prize? No way.
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