A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

so from most of the reviews this appears to be a book you either love or hate and i can see why, eggers has written something that is all we love and hate about my generation. the writing, story and style, is innovative and engaging, but also painfully self-indulgent and fustian. even eggers is aware of this divide, as this edition suggests you only read the first 123 pages.

everyone and everything in this book is dave eggers. this might be his most innovative device, which in many places is rather genius, like a literary fun house where all of the images end up being you. but eventually his obsession with himself and the mythologies he has created gets a bit tedious. to be fair, it's his book and he mostly sticks to stuff that drives the story onward, but occasionally he gets mired down in what feels like his personal inside joke. no matter how he describes it, it just isn't as entertaining as he seems to think it should be. he also does a lot of moralizing, which gets old pretty quickly, especially from a character who is 22 years old.

now, having made the above criticisms, i have to remind myself that the primary reason i as a woman in my mid thirties, don't spend a lot of time with people in their early twenties is because they tend to be self aggrandizing children made overly bold by their newly acquired freedoms and responsibilities that they perceive as full blown adulthood, equal to that of any one older than themselves. and if the kid has had some kind of tragic experience they feel even more suddenly sage-like and world weary. this is exactly how i feel about dave eggers in this book and while this certainly doesn't describe all twenty somethings, it does describe me when i was 22.

personally, i really liked it, but it speaks so directly to my own experiences, vices, and virtues, that i find even trying to write this review of it incredibly complicated. so...

the good: well written, some really funny and poignant moments. the story is interesting. overall, it's a good book.

the bad: sometimes you'll just want to skip ahead. even the author says so.

i would recommend it, but not broadly.