I tried, my friends. I tried. 34% in I've decided we're done.

Eggers is one of those names I’ve been meaning to read for years and so I’ve eventually gotten round to it, with this, what seems to be a highly divisive and polarising book. In spite of the dark and deeply tragic circumstances this displays a conspicuous lack of self-pity managing to make light of almost every situation.

There’s a real energy and immediacy about this which captures early 90s America very well and the flavour of the writing certainly brought to mind the likes of Franzen, Chabon, Coupland and even Palahniuk.

This is a really quirky story bursting with delightful randomness. It adopts a kind of goofy, melancholic sideways look at grief and the world in general with some thoroughly enjoyable capers and carry-on. So I actually really enjoyed this kind of dark slapstick calamity which is incredible readable and just a lot of fun.

as a huge douglas coupland fan, i thought i might enjoy 'a heartbreaking work...' i should've known better. i tried to read 'you shall know our velocity' last year and found it entirely unreadable. i gave up after 200 pages of nonsense. several friends raved about 'ahwoasg,' so i thought, 'ok, i'll give eggars another try.' again, i was horribly disappointed.

the pros: yes, it's funny at times and very *honest* (though can we take eggars at his word? never trust an autobiography). i laughed out loud several times while reading. many of eggars observations are insightful and funny. and yes, we do feel badly for dave and toph (at least in the beginning) and the the sibs after they lose their parents and head west. the 'here's a drawing of a stapler' was a good one, but the novel is short on humor and long on 'look at me and feel badly for me and my poor little brother.' in the end i just didn't care, nor did i have any reason TO care. narcissists don't necessarily make compelling protagonists.

the cons: 500 pages of psychobabble, 'witticisms,' and 'biting obseravtions' don't necessarily make one a 'talented writer,' as so many have stated. get an editor, for crying out loud. the prose isn't anything write home about -- it's sloppy and unfocused (and what's the dropping the 'f-bomb' 20 times per page? get a thesaurus while you're at it). read eggars and then read steinbeck, eugenides, or ishiguro and you'll see the masters at work. this novel is so completely self-indulgent and bloated that i kept looking for a needle under my bed to pop the darn thing. eggars tries WAY too hard to show how 'clever' he is (by using his oh-so-ironic hipster slang), but he's not as clever as he wants to believe (unless he's playing us all -- if that's case, i would applaud him).

in short, it has it's funny moments, but so did my grandma's funeral. i'm just glad i bought it used.

Each morning I wake up, switch off my alarm, bury my face in my hands and begin to sob. Not because Egger's work of staggering genius has broken my heart, but because I wasted probably close to six hours of sweet, sweet life slogging through his self-ingratiating muck. I will never have those hours back. NEVER.

OK, I give up @40%. There are some nice ideas, few interesting scenes and fun dialog here and there but it's all buried in cum from all that verbal mastrubation.

Non-fiction(ish). Dave Eggers' parents are dead, and now he's got to take care of his little brother. This is their sort-of-true story.

Because I'm a geek, Dave Eggers endears himself to me just by his modifications to the verso, which include his placement on a sexual-orientation scale of 1 to 10 and the reminder that the military-industrial-entertainment complex really has little power over us as individuals. The book suffers from all the weaknesses Eggers warns us about in the notes: it's self-referential, self-aggrandizing, self-conscious, self-destroying, and, if you'll excuse the redundancy, self-masturbatory. Still, at his best, Eggers has created something huge and moving. At his worst, well, it's still huge.

For whatever reasons, usually tears or boredom (tears the first half, boredom the second), I found I could appreciate the book a lot more if I only read twenty pages at a time. When my eyes started to glaze over and I realized I'd been staring at the same page for ten minutes without understanding a word of it, I would gratefully put it down and run away. Sometimes all the epic grandness of life and death and frisbee just takes it out of you.

It's a difficult and rambling book to read, but you can learn from it. I learned from it. I learned how to write like Dave Eggers, which is not necessarily a marketable skill, but it amuses me. Eggers probably feels the same way. He's not afraid of language. He writes sentences like: "There has been Spin the Bottle." And for that, I'm glad I read it. Even though it took a month and some serious eye-rolling to get through it.

Three stars for its linguistic novelty and for the first half of the book. The second half only gets two stars. Eggers should have told his heartbreaking story and then quit while he was ahead.

Digital audio read by Dion Graham


Water the Flowers!

I had heard about this memoir when it first came out and had it on my TBR ever since. I was intrigued by a book written by a young man who took on the responsibility for raising his much younger brother after both their parents died within a few weeks of one another. I expected some tragic, emotionally charged scenes and some sense of enlightenment or inspiration. I read another book by Eggers and really enjoyed it, so when the audio finally came in from the library, I was pleased to finally get to this on our long drive to Texas.

It’s clear that Eggers is intelligent. Obviously the circumstances that resulted in his guardianship of his baby brother were tragic, and every older sibling’s nightmare. I should have read the reviews by Goodreads members before I decided to finally read / listen to the book.

I found Eggers self-absorbed, immature, irresponsible and totally lacking in any insight. I really pity his little brother who might have been better off raised by wolves.

The most entertaining part of the book is the forward/preface/acknowledgments/copyright notice … which on the audiobook are read at the very end. Had this come first, I might have gone into the book expecting something more on the lines of satire, and (while satire is not my favorite genre) had different expectations and a different take on the work. But I went into it expecting a memoir of a tragic and difficult time in a young man’s life, and some reflection / insight / growth in character as a result. Too bad for me. Well, the preface,etc gets him one star.

Dion Graham does a reasonably good job reading the audiobook. Not his fault that the F bomb is used so often or that the writer gives us a manic narrative. (Not helped by my decision to listen at double speed to get through the 13 hours faster.)

(3.5)

Some great passages but I'm not entirely sure what this 'is'...the MTV Real World section feels like it could easily be cut. Very well done baggy memoir of a fraught period that's most interesting as a snapshot of post-grief freewheeling denial and terror and messy, upsetting, slightly deranged recalibration and least interesting as a commentary on a time and place.

i had seen dave eggers on dinner for five before i read this book and i liked him: he seemed really smart and sincere about the charity work he was doing. my friends really liked his first book, this book, and i decided to read it even after i had read his story in the mcsweeney anthology mammoth tales, and was stultified by it. a pseudo memoir would be different, i reasoned, and i was predisposed to like him. probably for the first thirty pages i was very engaged but gradually i realized that i hated his writing voice. yes, he was clever, and smart. but i wanted to punch him in the face too. i finished the book disappointed that i didn't like it but also understanding it was unlikely i would ever read a book of his again.

eggers, franzen, dfw, none have been for me. since i have only read brief interviews with hideous men by wallace, some argue that i could change my mind. and maybe i'm just not in the right place in my life to appreciate these voices, but i've hated margaret atwood for a long time, and it's not because i think she's a talentless hack. it's because i just don't like her writing voice, and i am pretty sure the same is true with regard to the author of this work.

Onvan : A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Nevisande : Dave Eggers - ISBN : 375725784 - ISBN13 : 9780375725784 - Dar 485 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2000

A very sad story told in Eggers' hyperconscious, cynical, and hilarious voice. As any high self-monitor knows, humans are capable of living entirely in their own heads. Eggers, who tells his own story, inhabits and analyzes his own thoughts to ridiculous degrees; the result is a really funny and honest look at tradgedy and his family. It was pretty heartbreaking alright, but for me the saddest part wasn't the death of the author's parents or the many difficulties that follow. Rather, it was the space that this neverending flurry of rumination created between Eggers and everyone around him, around Eggers and himself. The narrative flows like thoughts, and for me really clarified just how isolating consciousness can be. On the other hand, I experienced many small moments of knowing all too well what the author was going through, so his disconnect became my connect. It's kind of a relief, maybe even a remedy, to see how neurotic, self-absorbed, and love-starved we all are.

I didn't give this book five stars because for all it's hilarity, hipness, and relatability, the bottom sometimes seems to give way. Eggers seems to lack the fundamental confidence that could make this book great. It's as if he goes one step too far in celebrating his own insecurity. If art is supposed to take reality and turn it into truth, I think Eggers falls short. Still, it's an awesome and worthwhile read.

look. it's cool to hate on dave eggers.

it's *so cool* to be post-dave-eggers, and talk about how you didn't really like this book all that much, and it's even cooler to totally hate this book. it's like a coolness interview question. "did you like his book?" "yeah, I really did." "well, we can't be friends with *you*..."

this is just like those hipsters who don't like justin timberlake. fuck you, hipsters. that new album is solid gold.

I loved this book. I loved it, and I still love it. I wish to god I had sent away for the optional large-scale flow chart. at one point in my life, I had several (*several*) copies of this book, and I gave them away and lent them out and now I have none. one of those copies was practically destroyed with the underlining and highlighting and dog-earing-of-pages I practiced on it. I wish to god I still had that one.

and listen, cool kids. deep in the uncool heart of you, you loved it too. so step off.