A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dave EggersEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-02-13
ISBN: 0375725784
Number of pages: 485
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780375725784
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Book Review: The Work of A Staggering Genius
Summary: 5 Stars
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is Dave Eggers' moving memoir chronicling his journey after the death of both of his parents, and his struggles of trying to find himself while caring for his adolescent brother, Toph. Eggers tells his story with extraordinary voice and is able to reveal his true thought processes through writing that more often sounds like the mumblings of his inner-conscience rather than a finely articulated memoir. But "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is nothing but a finely articulated memoir. Eggers passionately conveys his conflicts between old and young, adult and child, responsibility and immaturity, brother and parent and son - struggling to find a happy medium as a twenty-some year old full-time guardian of his brother. Eggers speaks to the reader as if we are right there with him, allowing us to witness the good, the bad, and the ugly. He manages to truly create a dynamic image of himself that we can't help but feel is genuine; however, not always diplomatic.
Eggers cleverly gives levity to his otherwise somber situation. Through both this wittiness and his straight-forward revelations that he would "be bored without Toph", we are able to grasp that, despite the overwhelming responsibility of raising an 8 year old, going to parent/teacher conferences, making lunches and dinners, and trying to be the parent that everyone expects him to be while keeping up his own parents' legacies, Eggers can find the good among the bad and the ugly. Inspiringly, Eggers still maintains his "fun-loving big brother" status, but always feels the pressure that he's not the role model he should be. Eggers creatively reveals his secret paranoia that he will be found out for not taking care of Toph like a parent should and reveals his guilt that he can't do so. In the same creative, swift, sub-conscience "blabbering", we also learn that Eggers is constantly questioning people's acceptance of him and Toph "as a couple", and always imagining the worst possible outcomes for him and Toph: murder, kidnapping, drowning. Uncertainty that probably stems from having the worse-case scenarios happen to his mother and father years earlier and the lack of control that Eggers had to save either of his parents is strongly contrasted in the new control he is given in determining Toph's childhood and future. Through every up and down, Eggers reveals his life in terms some may find too harsh and candid, but in terms that never deny the ugly truth.
Heartbreakingly, Eggers loses his parents right before our eyes all throughout the book. Starting with their actual death, then with the moving from Chicago and selling his parents' home, the loss of the only remaining artifacts he has of his parents': his father's wallet and a teddy bear that evokes feelings of his mother, and the lack of closure he gets after his parents' deaths because there was no funeral and no ashes to scatter. Eggers doesn't seek closure until the very end, when he revisits his hometown, finds his mother's ashes and scatters them; finally setting himself free from his dead parent's grasp.
Eggers cleverly gives levity to his otherwise somber situation. Through both this wittiness and his straight-forward revelations that he would "be bored without Toph", we are able to grasp that, despite the overwhelming responsibility of raising an 8 year old, going to parent/teacher conferences, making lunches and dinners, and trying to be the parent that everyone expects him to be while keeping up his own parents' legacies, Eggers can find the good among the bad and the ugly. Inspiringly, Eggers still maintains his "fun-loving big brother" status, but always feels the pressure that he's not the role model he should be. Eggers creatively reveals his secret paranoia that he will be found out for not taking care of Toph like a parent should and reveals his guilt that he can't do so. In the same creative, swift, sub-conscience "blabbering", we also learn that Eggers is constantly questioning people's acceptance of him and Toph "as a couple", and always imagining the worst possible outcomes for him and Toph: murder, kidnapping, drowning. Uncertainty that probably stems from having the worse-case scenarios happen to his mother and father years earlier and the lack of control that Eggers had to save either of his parents is strongly contrasted in the new control he is given in determining Toph's childhood and future. Through every up and down, Eggers reveals his life in terms some may find too harsh and candid, but in terms that never deny the ugly truth.
Heartbreakingly, Eggers loses his parents right before our eyes all throughout the book. Starting with their actual death, then with the moving from Chicago and selling his parents' home, the loss of the only remaining artifacts he has of his parents': his father's wallet and a teddy bear that evokes feelings of his mother, and the lack of closure he gets after his parents' deaths because there was no funeral and no ashes to scatter. Eggers doesn't seek closure until the very end, when he revisits his hometown, finds his mother's ashes and scatters them; finally setting himself free from his dead parent's grasp.
Summary of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
National BestsellerThe 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.
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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