A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Rating:
Summary: Love it or hate it!
Review: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on A True Story is based on Eggers true-life story, and while liberties have been taken to change some facts, the book is very effective in sharing the story of a young man struggling with great loss and awesome responsibility.

Eggers tells of the death of both his parents to cancer. He shares his deep love for his mother, and his feelings of ambivalence towards his father. Eggers' story is one of gut-wrenching loss. He writes of his mother's death with brutal honesty, but somehow manages to mix in an amazing amount of humor that keeps his book from becoming too painful to read. His book shares his feelings of love and responsibility towards his brother, his anger, and his resentment towards his loss of freedom. The book starts with his mother's death, winds through a number of events and adventures in Dave's young adult life, and ends at a point where he has found some healing and closure.

While at times the book may feel self-serving and egotistical, this feeling serves to highlights Eggers gifted writing. Judge for yourself. Pick up a copy. Love it or hate it, it's an important work of art. I'd also like to thank the reviewer that mentioned The Losers' Club by Richard Perez -- another '90s oriented novel, though much shorter, also about love and loss.

Rating:
Summary: I can't think of a good title for my review. Sorry.
Review: After coming upon Dave Eggers' thinly veiled autobiography, I could not force myself to stop reading. His words and way of expressing his thought process throughout the book was astonishing and seemed very much true to life. He has a way of speaking honestly about what most writers would try to dress up. I, myself, find it easy to relate to his philosophy of living life while you can. Clearly an existentialist, he captures the attitude of many people of his generation who demand the required instant gratification that is denied to us so many times. Because of his look on life, he is not constrained to do things in hopes of a rewarding afterlife. His relationshipwith his brother seems touching yet hard at the same time and I believe that it's his younger brother who keeps him grounded in life. I reccomend this book to anyone who isn't confined to small minded thinking.

Rating:
Summary: i will christen this review, "my review"
Review: things I can't put down: my own hand, the ceiling, this book.

reading this, i smile, sometimes even laugh out loud, which makes people on the subway like me not at all.

i am young and female, and i think this book will work especially well with young people. the story is very, erm, heartbreaking and feels like fiction even if it's mostly all true. the relationships are touching and the characters ring true, whatever that means. they are multi-dimensional, and this is a good thing.

i think the reason i did not give this book 5 stars is because i sensed a bit of a superiority complex coming from the author, which does not make the book any worse - it's just that i got the impression that he would judge me, be a hatah, whatever the kids are saying these days. and this thought frightened me.

if you liked eggers' ventures into the magazine world and if you like hornby, sedaris, that bunch, you will probably like this as well. you should probably read it though, even if you think you will hate it, so that at least you will have an opinion whenever someone brings it up. because it's better to have something mean to say than not to say anything at all. don't be boring.

Rating:
Summary: Bold, Unafraid and Insightful... One That I would Recommend
Review: I don't typically "push" books, even if I like them. However, credit is due with this one so I'm going to give it. This book:

1) Is interesting in its composition. That is, it doesn't follow any tired or easily- recognizable formats.

2) Is engaging both intellectually and emotionally.

3) Is honest and unafraid.

As a writer myself, I always appreciate a story that strays from the norm. That alone is enough for me to actively recommend this book. However, despite being different and having guts (I mean, look at the title...) this book has a lot to offer. For example, it gives real insight into several circumstances that many of can't relate to our have lost touch with -- the creative process, the energy of youth, what it is like to be isolated even when you are in a crowd...

Rating:
Summary: Boring times three
Review: Writers deserve to be read all the way through, but this was a tough one to finish. Pointless, dull, and self-indulgent.

Rating:
Summary: Not....even....close.
Review: So this is what all the indie rock kids are reading and worhshipping. I don't know whether to laugh at or pity the people who extol the limited virtues of this overhyped pretentious debut. Underdeath Eggers' gaudy, self-conscious, ego stroking prose, lies a vacuous intellect that makes itself evident if you are smart enough to see it. Life is short, read something else.

Rating:
Summary: just what i was looking for
Review: In book stores, in libraries, this is obviously what I'm always looking for--a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and one that is all about me, a media-saturated youngish American guy who was in his 20's in the 90's. Eggers' goofing title itself tells me that my quirks of sensibility and my neediness are shared with others who've emerged from the same cultural era (it's obvious, but there's great satisfaction in being reminded in such a sly way). Likewise, within the book I found portrayals of thought processes, insecurities, and manias of self-consciousness that mirrored my own so precisely I thought my narcissistic soul would burst from the force of recognition. The 'genius' of the book is in the way Eggers has fulfilled his self-confessed need to be special by making the confession itself into a literary event and thus himself into a celebrated author. On a sentence and paragraph level he's just a very good, entertaining writer, but he's achieved specialness and meaningfulness simply by putting himself on display and commenting so cannily on what its like to do so. Young, privileged Americans feel entitled to so much--our lives to be special and our art to be brilliant and heartbreaking (whereas, in the 19th century, say, you may have simply experienced heartbreak and been exalted by the genius of some work you picked up because of its subject matter or its author's reputation. You didn't go looking for 'a heartbreaking work of genius'). Eggers is just like the rest of us and he's managed the trick of creating great art from ordinary materials by showing how we ordinary people long for the experience of greatness. I don't know if there's any brilliance here for a 60 year old or an 18 year old. But Eggers' peers should all get it (and anyone else might just enjoy the storytelling and the appealing cast of characters.) I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't repeat this success, but he's deliberately stumbled into something here that's worth your while. Decide for yourself! Special thanks to the reviewer who also suggested The Loser's Club by Richard Perez, a slim quasi-romance about a total loser addicted the personal ads -- another celebration of the 1990s, which already seems like a long, long time ago. :( (Boy I feel old!)

Rating:
Summary: Love/hate relationship
Review: Dave E. is a boy genius, and this, his first book, shows all the wonderful and irritating qualities of other boy geniuses. He's an innovative writer, experimenting with new dimensions of prose, and most of the time it works. I devoured the first 2/3 of HWofSG (what a clunky title: I kept trying and trying to remember it but often said A Staggering Genius of Heartbreak or A Work of Stupendous Heartbreak or A Genius of Heartrending Sorrow - but no matter - everyone knew what I was talking about anyway)...
Anyway, I devoured the first 2/3 of it and thought his sense of writing in the immediacy of the moment, keeping his readers right inside the situation at all times, was masterful.
The last third, however, was kind of a snooze, esp in comparison, and I found myself skimming.
Definitely worth reading; will probably stand the test of time; but I think his editor got lazy on about page 300. Could easily have been a better (outstanding) book if cut by about 200 pages.

Rating:
Summary: I want to have his children
Review: Simply, if you are one of those people who live in a constant inner dialogue, this book is for you. I literally was unable to put it down until I finished it. It's odd how a book written by a man you've never met about a life you've never lived can make a person (well this person) feel so understood.

Rating:
Summary: Look Ma -- It's brilliant.
Review: Postmodernism has often been criticized for turning literature into unnecessarily pretentious, emotionless crap, and perhaps its critics have a point; it often seems as if genuine emotional expression has gone the way of iambic pentameter. However, Dave Eggers's brilliant "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" proves that even a book that contains statements like "So tell me something: This isn't really a transcript of the interview, is it?" during an exchange we would have no reason to expect wasn't truthful, can be, well, heartbreaking.

The beginning "A.H.W.O.S.G." is, as its author states in an extremely "look-ma-no-hands" introduction, the most brilliant part of the book. In it, Eggers describes -- brilliantly -- the death of both of his parents to cancer within 31 days of each other. However, Eggers manages to create a perfect harmony of memories of what he had for breakfast the day his mother died and the exact color, smell, and texture of the bile his mother constantly had to spit out after she had her stomach removed.

"A.H.W.O.S.G." is full of such juxtapositions, and, while one would expect them to get annoying, Eggers, who proves himself to be a writer of immense talent, manages to make the book a complete success. I read the 500-page "A.H.W.O.S.G." in two sittings, and it is an easy recommendation. I agree with another reviewer who also recommended two other Amazon quick picks: the hilarious satire -- [e-mail] by Tom Grimes and the slender, personal, oddity -- The Losers' Club by Richard Perez. I'm ready to start my own book club.