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Book Review: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Eggers)

I had read so many positive things about this book I finally decided to pick it up in the O'Hare airport even though I knew it probably wouldn't live up to expectations. Any book with a really funny copyright page can't be resisted, though, so I gave in.

Overall, it was good. It captured emotions that I hadn't ever seen captured before, especially that feeling of your brain rapidly playing out a scenario covering years, triggered by a simple observation. The book starts out (after a too-clever acknowledgements section) with a very gripping story of the death of his two parents. Afterwards, the story gets more knowing of itself, and while I can identify with the desire he has to admit the falseness inherent in writing a novel, it threatens to overtake the more fundamental emotional truth of the story. But he admits to all this, too, so it is hard to criticize too much for it. Perhaps all I can say is that it makes the book less enjoyable to read for a while and I had to put some effort into finishing it.

It is perhaps the most "knowing" book you will read, at least in terms of the self-recognition, not just of the narrator, but of the fact that it is a book. I can see the temptation in thinking about what his next book would be like - if the really moving scenes in here could have been used in the service of a more sincere, or less clever, or less self-knowing story, it could be really good stuff. So maybe now that he has come to terms with having written a book he can stop obsessing about it. But I think I will wait a while before picking up his next book, since this one hasn't left my brain completely yet, which is another sign that there was something good in there.