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Summary: xyz
Review: Yes. He can write. Impressively at times, as in the book's precious if ultimately crushing first chapter.But the caricaturized self-indulgence of this - his antimemoir - is a one-trick pony. A joke that gets old in a hurry. And one which makes this a spotty read at times. Despite his best efforts to hyper-self consciously torpedo the very pretense under which he's spilling his guts, Eggers is at his best when he's coming clean. Though he hedges the book's bets before his story can possibly overreach itself by employing all manner of cloying device - and even so reveals himself to his reader - the book works best when it is telling its story. Despite his claims to the contrary, the book's story is not in its untelling. Despite its shortcomings, I'd still recommend this book.
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Summary: I am in love with Mr. Eggers
Review: Judging by the photo on the back of his book, he's a cutie ... definately worth a coffee. Well perhaps "love" is too strong a word in my subject title -- but it got your attention now didn't it? So let's just say I'm in "like." However, I'm having a hard time with his book. I am stuck at page 50 or so, and find I don't have the energy to read on. Maybe it's the subject of death and my resistance to facing it that has me daunted, or perhaps it's the way it assaults your senses, going off in so many directions, that I'm having difficulty. In any event, I've tried, I've REALLY tried, to get through this book. And I DO consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, so I'm wondering if I'm the only person in this world who sees the disarray of this book, the poetic madness, the indulgency of it? It's almost as if the author has so many things to tell you that he crams them in wherever he can. And that can be exhausting to the reader. It was for me. I've heard such wonderful reviews of it, that I'm determined, one way or another, to read it to the end. But for now, it's sitting on my bedside table, staring defiantly at me, closed -- for now.
Rating: 
Summary: A HEARTBREAKING DISAPPOINTMENT
Review: Because there were so many 5 star awards for this book I got it and read it...only up to page 65 that is as I just couldnt take it anymore. The two forwards turned me off originally as did the table of contents. Then as I started reading the foul language turned me off some more...and then it seemed to me many disjointed events appeared. The author was tending to his sick mother and the next paragraph his dad died and about 2 paragraphs after that the discourse went back to his mother. I wouldn't know if things improved after page 65 as I just couldn't waste my time reading any further as there are too many books to read that I would really like.
Rating:
Summary: One Hit Wonder
Review: Dave Eggers has the feel, but not the grip. Unfortunately, the good things about A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (its title not being one of them; the book is neither heartbreaking nor staggering) are solely the result of the peculiar situation in which Mr. Eggers found himself--the custodian of a pre-teen sibling upon the untimely and nearly simultaneous deaths of both parents. The story is bound to be at least moderately interesting no matter who tells it, and no matter what style is employed. On the matter of style, the author is entitled to polite applause at a minimum. He employs some mechanisms that we should expect to see copied by others, including dialogues that begin believably and cross the line into fantasy before the reader realizes where he or she is. For example, the author reports conversations with his little brother that wind up with the youngster philosophizing in a manner impossibly mature for his years--and the reader is left chuckling at being duped. Cleverness, however, is not enough to salvage the book. This is a work of nonfiction, and it is an unabashed inspection--no, more of a awe-filled self-worship--of the author himself. Such a premise might be more acceptable if we were not talking about a man whose reaction upon leaving a hospital visit to a comatose friend is to attempt sex (seduce would be the wrong term--trust me on this) with a female friend with whom he makes the visit. Or a man who deems it necessary to advise us that he masturbates now once a day--claiming that he got a slow start in such matters as a result of his Catholic upbringing. (Note to the author: Whoa, there, big fella; you can slow down. You've probably pretty much caught up with the rest of the world.) You get the drift. This is a slacker vomiting on the pages, interesting only because the vomited lunch contained some mildly exotic foods. My guess is we've seen all he has to secrete. I gave this book my "great book test." I read all but the last 5 pages, and put it on the night table in order to see how long I could withstand the temptation. The answer is two months and counting. Look for Mr. Eggers, who postures himself as an "indie," counter-culture type of guy, to sign a big movie deal with a Hollywood studio.
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Summary: Most pretentious book of the year award
Review: Shame on the person who edited this book. Never have I read such a smug, pretentious, self-consciously hip pile of pages. The best argument against the silliness of hype.
Rating: 
Summary: It really is AHWOSG
Review: As a reader with a low threshold for gratuitous weirdness, I came to this book expecting a sloppy, self-centered meditation on life, death, and innocence lost too soon. Instead, I found an enormously entertaining and moving story about all those things. I've read many reviews that call this book uneven or meandering, but AHWOSG defies and revises conventional ideas about what a narrative is--to call it uneven is to suggest that it should be something else entirely. Take it for what it is, and enjoy the ride.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good, but Overrated
Review: Dave Eggars' fictional autobiographical novel is a delight to read, yes, but is it brilliant fiction/memoir? No. Before reading this book, I was hoping to embark on a journey that would end with the discovery of a new fiction giant, a brilliant new light on the literary horizon. Dave Eggars, though an adequate writer and one truly (as the critics say) wise beyond his years, is not the literary prodigy he sometimes is made out to be by the media. The best parts of the book are those that come across as the most true, the most personal: his fantastic descriptions of his mother, his adorable depiction of special moments with his younger brother for whom he must take up the role of mother. But Eggars continually distracts from the real genius of his novel with second rate metafictional tropes. Now, I'm all for metafictional tropes, when they work, but this is not the type of novel that needs such tricks. Also, the novel never overcomes its self-indulgence; it never fully transcends itself (with one possible exception). Moreover, the end is a failure, bringing back down what he had worked to raise up. Although the tone of the novel falters routinely, most of the characters (with the notable exception of brother and mother) are shallow, and the pages Eggars warns us of in his brilliantly entertaining though somewhat superfluous preface are really as bad as he says they are, the brilliant bits definitely make reading the book worth your while. The book is the type that manages to come out smelling, if not like roses, pretty good even with its indulgences and rough spots. Dave Eggars is not the bright future of fiction, but he is an enjoyable read and a wise young man.
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Summary: You can judge a book by its title
Review: "A" : A book. To begin with. Just a book. We'll get over it. A memoir (the author's parents died within 5 months of each other, of cancer). About how the author - Dave - had to raise his nine year old brother Toph (short for Christopher, pronounced - I think - like the first syllable in Tofu) alone. "Heartbreaking" : Dave (you call him Dave, in your head, as you're reading - in the future we wont use surnames when we talk about great authors, it'll be Dave-this and Zadie-that)suggests you only read the first 109 pages. That's the good stuff, he says. He describes watching Gladiators while his cancerous couch-ridden mother has a nose bleed that wont stop. Reading about death is like eating off-sorbet (you eat a little to check, you look away, you eat a little more, is it off? I think it is, you eat a little more, you're not feeling so good). It is too much. The pages decay between your fingers. It is TOO much. "Work" : You might think - even if the writing is as good as I'm going to tell you it is - that is not the kind of book I want to read. You may have read Rick Moody's (brilliant) book "Purple America" and had your fill of cancerous parents and dysfunctional post-nuclear families. You might have read "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (another great book) and think : I've done painful memoir. Sounds a little bit like hard work to me. "Of" : Useful preposition. Used to link one idea with another. Interesting, if you juxtapose two things in a cool way. Take a book about death and surviving and make it funny, for example. Again, you might not think that is such a big deal (Woody Allen's been doing that for years). "Staggering" : What makes the book so (I'm tempted to leave this space blank for your own superlative, like Lawrence Sterne : I figure it's either "bright", "clever", "enjoyable" or "good", "good" the way John Travolta might say it) is what he combines the heartbreak with. Brace yourself. It's a meta-text. I know. Metatextuality is old. He has let the reader know he is writing as book. He knows we know he knows. How clever. The thing about meta-books is they all abide by strict rules. 1. The author thinks he is clever (which means the author thinks he is cleverer than you, stand up David Foster Wallace to your shame). 2. The author has problems engaging with the reader (because let's face it, the jokes are there to leaven the seriousness, to appear engaging in the face of that which worries you). 3. The author is young and brilliant and sexy and with-it and rich and - all of the things you are not. Which you don't need to be told (especially with you having shelled out money on the thing in the first place). Dave gets it just right, though. He's "Alfie" and John Cusack in "High Fidelity" and Ferris Bueller rolled into one. You like him. For all his faults. In the preface he offers to split part of his advance with the first 200 readers who contact him with proof of having read the book. He offers tips on how to read the book (skip the preface, skip everything after page 109). He tells you he hates memoirs. (He says, I'm not Irish and I'm not over seventy, I shouldn't be writing a memoir.)It's funny. Laugh out loud funny. Dave gives good gag. "Genius" is a word that gets bandied about all too often these days. (We live in a world of "intelligent" football after all.) The thing is this. Unlike, say, Aleksander Hemon's book "The Question of Bruno" (which shows promise but was hugely overpraised - "he's the new Nabokov!", "the new Borges!", he's GOD!"), Eggers book is a great book. Great like Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" is a great book. Not great as in large. Not great as in really good (although it is). Great as in likely to be remembered, likely to be read again, likely to be the start of a career you will follow. Genius, then.
Rating:
Summary: Self indulgent egotism barely rescued by sheer intelligence
Review: Misdirected sense of self worth combined with self indulgent egotism is barely rescued by an underlying sense of humor, brutally honest confessions of feelings that we all have and a very bright author. There were chapters and passages that were downright brilliant and others that seemed to drag. The humor and honesty of the book are offset by the self righteous banter... the author's beliefs and viewpoints seem to contradict each other (or maybe he intended to send a message that was just over my head). Overall, the great parts of this book propelled me through the rest. While this is contradicting the books' underlying premise, I will look forward to the maturation of Dave Eggers as a writer. I think that he'll be much better at 30 or 40 than he is trying to justify the lifestyle of the young and politically correct. There is just so much good stuff here that I hope he can learn not to take himself quite so seriously. Or maybe it's just because he's african american (a joke from one of the good parts of the book)
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Summary: Maybe you have to have lived it...
Review: Reading through the other reviews, I am struck by the differences in opinion. For the umpteenth time in my life, I am forced to draw the conclusion that there are some things in life that are only appreciated by people who have lived through similar tragedies. The descriptions of watching a mother die of cancer had me shaking with the sheer truth of them. The menus and games with Toph had me laughing out loud. I find myself wondering if I might recognize him if I saw him on the street, wanting to talk to him, to ask him how he ever wrote this amazing thing. I read this book almost straight through in less than a day. It spoke to me in a way very little had in a long time, and maybe that's because I'm an MTV generation 20-something or maybe that's because my mom died of cancer, or maybe I was having a bad weekend. But really, I think Eggers has managed to capture this heartbreaking (yes, truly) experience in an alarmingly real and funny and poignant way and I am about to go read it again. Thank you, Dave Eggers, for writing this.
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