**Note: This review was written almost 10 years ago. I would gladly delete it, but it appears some people have engaged in fruitful back-and-forth in the comment thread. I let it stand for the sake of their discussion, but since every once in a while I wake up to an email informing me of how some stranger on the internet thinks I'm an asshole (and as I'm also a person who can't stand the heat and would gladly get out of the kitchen if I could), I'd like to add a few disclaimers.

This review was written by a young woman who never dreamed more than 2 or 3 people would read it. Hence, I was not attempting to be Northrop Frye. I was being silly. I entirely agree the review would be better if it attempted real, concrete criticism rather than aggressive shrugging. To write that review, though, I would have to really care about AHWOSG, and I simply do not. But that does not mean Eggers deserved mere snark. I leave it up only to a) allow people to continue their discussion and b) the mere recollection of it is a source of instantaneous humility.

Finally, this review was the product of an incarnate, imperfect person with background associations and moods trickling into their work. I had a chip on my shoulder when I wrote this. You could say I was sneering at someone(s) in the review besides Eggers (of course, sneering is bad and one shouldn't do it at all, whether on the internet or face-to-face). As I wrote above, a good and meaningful review would be far more impartial, specific, and clear. But this isn't a good and meaningful review. It's a hasty sneer with perhaps some basis for its attitude but certainly not in the review as written, and the author would gladly delete it save for the fact that it hosts a comment thread other people find productive.

So enjoy discussing AHWOSG on this thread, but if you are awaiting a response from me on the merits of the book or to further explode in fireworks of snark, I'm afraid you'll be waiting in vain. The thread stays; please, be polite to one another. Even if snark has some ground in the truth, it only encourages snark in others, and no one feels good or changes their mind when they feel attacked.**

One of my least favorite books of all time. I cringed with frustration as I turned every page, and I only wanted to finish it so that I could say I found nothing redeeming. Oh sure, he was flashy and could draw a cheap laugh, but it was like admiration for bubbles: it went nowhere and said nothing. Henry James this is not (I don't love HJ, but I know talent when I see it and this is self-examination for voyeuristic purposes). I was disgusted with the title when I first heard of it; though I can see the attempt at self-ridicule, eh, nope, he's pretty satisfied with himself. I then heard so much lovely stuff about it, which worries me now in retrospect, but I tried it with an open mind: Nope Buddy!

Why even go into the hundred reasons why it sucks, since the author is such a vapid creature full of style and lacking substance - the book doesn't really merit an intellectual attack. Really, I think it's every single thing that is wrong with certain aspects of modern literature. Foster Wallace and Eggers can suck my metaphorical dick, since they seem to exist for nothing else but their own pretension. Way to reveal modern angst boys, sorry that people a lot smarter did it better a hundred years ago, and said something relevant for people who weren't self-absorbed fops. I look forward to a future world cataclysm in which this book can be lost, and something worthwhile take its place in the literary canon. (Also, I apologize to all the people who really sincerely love this book. I know I like some things that can be deemed pretty trivial. And who knows, maybe the author is a nice enough guy. I just, I gotta say it, I really can't stand this book, and wish there were better books around to take away some of its appeal. Art for the ego just doesn't seem enough).

My memories of the book have grown hazy, and I did write my first review while living in New Orleans. I think I slammed down a drink at Igors at 3 am while waving Flannery or Walker or Eudora in the air and swore that Franzen and Eggers were my metaphysical enemies and one day I would read Wittgenstein deeply enough to make seemingly-profound arguments about nonsense culture-consumers like "Stop making literature a habit of stylistic consumption and read something and decide if it's true." I remain too lazy, but still, I think we should read literature with an idea of the Good, and how to pursue it. My always-reforming vision has been consistent about thinking of this not as a charming memoir but as a lazy memoir without real love or value. I wish I could see what so many think they do, but it remains mirror-playing to me.. Maybe most of this is late-night fighting-Tara b.s., but I still think my absurd perspective is still more concerned about what is good and lovely and true than the steady narcissism of AHWOSG.

Uno de los misterios insondables de la muerte es cómo la sobreviven quienes quedan; no es tanto qué pasa con el ser que se va a la muerte, sino lo que sucede con los vivos que se quedan tras el telón frío y oscuro de lo insondable. ¿Cómo Dave, un joven de veinte años, lleno de sueños y hormonas, cuidará de Toph, su hermanito de siete años, luego de que padre y madre mueren de cáncer, uno detrás del otro con tres semanas de diferencia?

La trama de esta historia rueda entre juegos, comidas desordenadas, irresponsabilidades y miedos. Como lector, me sentí testigo del descubrimiento conmovedor de la salud en declive de la madre y el padre, me asombró el papel moral que familiares y amigos fueron asumiendo ante las circunstancias que solo la familia debía tomar; y me resultó genial la manera como el lenguaje aglutinó esa experiencia de crecer en familia tratando de entender el vacío de seres tan importantes.

Me cansó un poco los episodios relacionados con el proyecto de Dave, la revista Poder; así que traté de asumirlos como sucesos típicos de jóvenes que quieren cambiar el mundo con su sarcástica superioridad moral, capturada por los medios de la época (MTV) para comercializar trivialidades que pasan por cultura popular. No obstante, esta línea de la trama presentó al Dave idealista y hormonal, en contraste con el Dave que deambula entre ser hermano y padre de Toph.

I am so glad I finally read this book. It has been on my want-to-read list for ever.

As usual I had no clue what this book was about, and this was even weirder as I had been wanting to read it for so long. But I was really surprised when I started reading and there was all this writing before the story even began.

I learned at uni never to ignore prefaces as they may just turn out to be part of the story, and this could not be more true about this book. Everywhere you can find little notes and comments where they shouldn't be. The acknowledgments usually a summary of names and thanks by the author turned out to be a rather longish chapter about the story, left out passages and symbolism and other things.

So before the real story even started the author had put me in a certain mindset towards his book and his story. That somewhat left me disappointed when the main story began. The humor and tone changed and I found myself in his life, in his living room losing his mother to cancer.

The main story is all about him and his life after his parents died and he took care of his little brother.

The writing was still impressive but at one point I was getting rather fed up with him and his personality, wondering why I was still reading this, when he turned things around and used a conversation with his little brother to comment on his narration and the way he structured and told the story. How he presented himself and others.
And I was back on board. I loved that. It made me appreciate the book again. This happened a few more times, but not so often as to be really boring.

When it comes to his character and person I sometimes just wanted to slap him across the face and tell him to snap out of it, at other times I could just roll my eyes at him and his ideas, and worse of all was when I recognized one of my bad or strange habits in him. Needless to say, we would not be friends and it is not a memoir I could take away much for my own life, or made me interested in his.

Due to his writing stunts I found myself questioning his narration constantly and that is what I will take away from this book. The way he interacts with the reader and uses narrative techniques to engage them.

When I first read this book, I remember thinking that if I was ever going to write a book, it would probably sounds a whole lot like this. It was a pleasant tingle of recognition -- Eggers' internal monologue (at least, the one he writes with) is very similar to mine (at least, the one I write with).

The endless self-reflectiveness and self-awareness (and awareness of the self-awareness, in that I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know-that-you-know-etc.-ad-nauseum kind of way) thing can be a little much if you're not into that whole breaking-down-of-the-4th-wall trick, and I've read a number of times of the book being accused of being gimmicky, but I thought it was clever and honest -- again, I recognize my voice (and its own recognition of voice-ness, etc., etc.) in that, and relate to it, and appreciated it, and thought it was particularly well done.

The book is funny, and gripping, and clever, and intense, and sad, and brutally honest about the protagonists' insecurities and at times baser intentions. He also seems like a genuinely cool guy doing cool stuff, the kind of person you could see wanting to be in his circle of friends and getting caught up in the energy of whatever the project du jour is. Course, he already knows that and sort of resents you for it, and you know that he knows that, and he knows that you know that he knows that...

Clearly, this is a polarizing book. All I'll add is that the first time I read it, sometime in the middle of college, I had all of the negative reactions I've read here. It was sometimes funny, and sad and beautiful and all that, but mostly it was an autobiography by an asshole who was full of himself and I just didn't see why I should care, why I should keep reading.

And then I read it again a few years later. And I don't really know what happened in between exactly. Maybe I became friends with more assholes. Maybe I became more of an asshole myself. But I really loved it the second time. By the end, I was feeling the kind of exhilaration and momentum that I've only gotten from a handful of books ever.

The other interesting thing is, I had this exact same series of reactions with Catcher in the Rye. Granted, I read that way too early. Like, 8th or 9th grade. But still, same reaction. So, maybe give it another try in a few years if you're so inclined.

Also, I'm kind of okay with Dave Eggers being a bit of an egotistical asshole. Honestly, I think that he delivers enough that I don't really care what kind of guy he is. Yeah, the McSweeney's empire has probably been overhyped, and I won't go into that here, but I don't think that most of the attention he's gotten has been unjustified. At the very least, I think that he's trying to get more people to read and write. I'm not sure how successful he's been, but the goal is noble and rare and I approve.

There are parts of this book I absolutely loved. There are also parts of it I definitely hated. I think Eggers' talent is obvious, his playfulness kinetic, his abilility to make his own grief/history both gruesome and beautiful by basically eating every experience and person surrounding him (disposal of his mom's ashes is a good example). Eventually his thinking about the thinking and thinking about thinking about thinking kinda drives me nuts.

I do, however, want to distinguish my discomfort with this early Dave Eggers book from the current jealous hipster backlash against Eggers. He isn't Henry James, certainly, but still Eggers manages to subvert the artificial separation between fiction and memoirs in aHWofSG. I'm also glad I waited to read this until Eggers had proven through McSweeney's, and his more recent books of nonfiction and fiction, that he wasnt just a gimmicky one-hit-wonder.

I love real life orphan stories and I appreciated Dave Egger’s originality, humor, and honesty. I felt sad and awed and amused, and occasionally annoyed. A very unique way of writing a memoir; I adored it. And it takes place mostly in San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area, an area I know and love, so it was really fun to recognize so many places. A very creative effort from a funny and intelligent guy. (Oh, and I went to see him at a lecture: he brought homemade cookies for the audience and I found him very endearing. And he does a lot of good work with local kids also, but I knew all this long after I read this book.)

For the first half of this Dave Eggers book--which everyone has been telling me to read since the dawn of time-- I was absolutely in love with Eggers' writing. Eggers' unique voice coupled with his heartbreaking, raw, and personal familial tragedy made for a story that was both poignant and interesting to read. I really enjoyed his asides, and found myself smiling when a conversation between Eggers and his younger brother evolved into a metatextual examination of Eggers' entire venture.

But then I got to the long form interview and the wheels sort of fell off the back-half of the story.

What worked as cute, funny, or poignant in the first half turns into some sort of artistic ouroboros in which Eggers rarely grounds the story enough for the more experimental tricks he's trying to pull off. Naturally, Eggers prefaces this shift during the aforementioned interview. There's some parts of the second half of the book that I really enjoyed, but it definitely lacks the quality of the opening half.

It's a shame because I was so impressed with the first half and so lukewarm by the book's end. No doubt that the book is readable despite its experimental trappings: I read through it in sessions that were long, but I seldom felt as if I were putting in work. I'm glad that I finally got around to this one, thanks to everyone for pushing me to read it!

Yesterday on my way to work I had already made up my mind about this book, I was going to give it two stars. But this was yesterday and I had twenty pages left, that I just finished two minutes ago, and once I did I closed the book and said: "wow, this book was a crock of shit". And it truly was. I should have seen it coming once I started reading that awful acknowledgments part at the beginning where Eggers tries to be witty and funny and tries to connect with his reader. I skipped that, I decided I didn't want to engage Eggers, but I should have, since I would have decided early on that this was not for me.

I've been having such bad luck lately with books, and now I'm starting to feel bad dishing out all these two or one star ratings, but I have so many books lying around that I decided to categorize them, find some pattern, and start reading. So May became Memoir Month, and that's how I came around to reading this book. It didn't start out that bad, a bit gross at first since my gag reflex is always triggered when people talk about spit, or the consistency of it. I was ready for what was coming, a guy and his siblings lose both their parents and become orphans, sadness ensues, cue the waterworks, make me cry Eggers. But Eggers didn't make me cry, there were one or two passages that almost made me crack, were near perfect, but Eggers would ruin them with some asshole self-centered comment. See, Eggers had two older siblings (yes, had, we'll get to that later), but one was busy with work, and the other one was busy with law school, so it was up to little old David to take care of his seven year old little brother Toph, who is thirteen years his junior.

I thought that since Eggers had become Toph's immediate caretaker, that this book would deal with the difficulties of a young guy becoming a single parent out of the blue without actually becoming a parent. How he went from drinking in bars and having fun with his friends, to preparing school lunches and attending PTA meetings, how this was all staggering, heartbreaking and genius, all at the same time. But no! Eggers' life didn't change that much, largely due in part because Toph is, or was written out to be, a pretty amazing kid. He was a mini adult and thus not a thorn in Eggers' side, but more of a companion and a perma-buddy, some one there at your disposal twenty-four/seven, carved from the same organic matter as you, with your same likes and dislikes, but completely perfect in every single way. And so, every time Eggers would talk about something else, like that fledgling magazine he once headed, or that suicidal friend used as an arrogant ploy of what he had not become (thanks to Toph?), I found myself wanting more Toph. Where is Toph? We want more Toph! But this book is about David, well fuck David, David is boring and self-centered, and arrogant, and always bragging about how he was the only one who stepped up to the plate. But you know what? Having to remind people about your good deed is the same as not having done it at all. It's like feeding a homeless person and then bragging about it to your friends, you didn't do it because you are essentially a good person, but so you could feel better, superior, and have everyone recognize what a good person you are.

Yes, taking care of Toph was commendable, but it was also his obligation, and it was also his siblings' obligation, but they didn't write a book where they basically spelled out in a few words that he did it and they didn't. Talk about a rift! Looking it up in Wikipedia, the holy grail of information (I kid), it turns out that Eggers' sister Beth actually denounced the book because it downplayed the role she played in raising Toph. Sure, it made her seem irresponsible and selfish, having been the one legally named as the guardian in their parents' will, but having done that it also makes her look like a bit of an asshole. So we have Eggers being an asshole on the one hand for bragging about it, and Beth being a bit of an asshole on the other hand for denouncing her brother, undercutting his success, because he was the one out of all of them who wrote a book about 'their' experience. I would have preferred Toph's version of the events, how being thrown back and forth like a hot potato between his brother and sister affected his life. Where is Toph's memoir? I want Toph to write his memoirs, I'm sure those would actually win the Pulitzer. Really, how in the hell was this a contender for the Pulitzer in the first place? I mean, I too would have hated to lose my parents, BOTH my parents in the span of five weeks, and then feel mildly responsible for my sister's suicide (which he doesn't talk about in the book, but damn she committed suicide after her quote "LaToya Jackson moment", one and one equals two), but was literature that crappy that year?

I know that Eggers has been rather successful with his current literary magazine, McSweeney's Quarterly, has published some favorably reviewed fiction, and also does some charity work, but this book put me off so much in terms of who he is as a person that I doubt I'll be picking up anything else written by him any time soon.

Mr. Eggers has a genius for two things: finding and publishing some of the more exciting writers working today; turning "Weeee! Weeee! Look at me!! I am beautiful and so good to my little brother!!! Weeeee! Don't you want to touch me?" into 496 pages.

U vražju mater, kako me zatuče ova knjiga. Pročitala sam je samo zato što sam je impulsivno kupila, pa nek mi to bude nauk za ubuduće... tako mi i treba, kad nepromišljeno trošim mukom zarađene novce. Da je nisam platila, verovatno bih je batalila već pre polovine. Znam da zvučim kao Gramzi-Bagins, ali ovo je prva knjiga koju sam pročitala, a da me je naterala da se zapitam: da li postoji mogućnost povraćaja novca ukoliko nisam zadovoljna kupljenom knjigom? Znate ono, kad vam prodaju muda za bubrege.

Anyway, kod nas prevedena kao "Potresno delo zapanjujuće genijalnosti", ova knjiga nit' je potresna, nit' je zapanjujuća. Genijalnost nisam ni očekivala. 400 i kusur strana očekivala sam, eto, samo što nije došlo to "nešto", znate, ono "nešto" što vas prelomi da zavolite neku knjigu. Uzalud. Egers je svoju, zaista tragičnu, životnu priču (u svojoj 22-goj godini ostao je bez oba roditelja i postao staratelj osmogodišnjem bratu) uspeo da pretvori u histerično, pretenciozno i pseudo-intelektualno buncanje. Probijanje kroz kilometarske rečenice u kojima se više ne zna ni kako su počele, ni kuda su krenule, liči na probijanje kroz džunglu džepnim nožićem.

Sve u svemu, patnja. Za čitaoca. Egersu je verovatno bilo zabavno da ličnu tragediju koristi u svrhu promocije sopstvenih kvaziduhovitih egotripova. Fuj.

Thanks, Buckles, for encouraging me to read this all of those years ago! I remember at the time you said that you thought Eggers' writing was a lot like mine. I admit I felt swell about this while reading the book . . . sort of a strange sense of misplaced pride: "Ah, look what a clever thing he did just there, with those footnotes. That IS exactly what I would do! Well done, me. Er, I mean, Dave Eggers." And then, of course, after the pride came the fall. Realizing that while my own such memoir would be clever, sad, heartfelt, and sharp as hell in theory, Eggers was the one who had actually done it in practice. Son of a bitch, right? But, I digress. It's a GREAT book. One of my favorites of the past 10 years.