A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Undoubtedly one of the most inventive and unorthodox memoirs ever written, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS became an instant bestseller, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and made Dave Eggers's name as a brilliant, risk-taking young writer. Orphaned in college when his parents both died of cancer in the span of 32 days, Eggers and his kid brother Toph moved to San Francisco and set up a delightfully unorthodox life together, a mix of carefree adolescence and the unexpected responsibilities of adulthood. In between enrolling Toph in school, finding a home, juggling various romances, and auditioning for THE REAL WORLD, Eggers founded MIGHT, an independent magazine featuring a potent blend of commentary, cynicism, and comedyùthe same raucous style that would fuel his memoir. Though AHWOSG turns the memoir genre on its head and teems with self-mockery and postmodern trickery, beneath the cleverness it is a remarkable story of youthful hope and zeal, a story that became an instant classic for the youth generation at the dawn of the 21st century.

"[I]t is almost too good to be believed." - Jean-Louis Lauriere (London Review of Books, 11/16/00)

"Eggers lays everything out in exquisite, excruciating detail, but he wants to have his tearjerker and deconstruct it, too....[S]ome of the best parts of A. H. W. O. S. G. are in the fine print, literally; they exist on the margins, where Eggers seems to feel most at home....Whether he likes it or not, Eggers has written the kind of book he swears he never wanted to write: a hip tearjerker. It's ANGELA'S ASHES meets ON THE ROAD." - Robison E. Wells (New York, 2/1/00)

"Mr. Eggers demonstrates in this book that he can pretty much write on anything. He can turn a Frisbee game with his brother into an existential meditation on life. He can convey the wild, caffeinated joy he feels after seeing a friend wake up from a coma. And he can turn his efforts to scatter his mother's ashes in Lake Michigan into a story that's both a lyrical tribute to her passing and a crude, slapstick account of his ineptitude as a mourner, lugging about a canister of ashes that reminds him, creepily, of the Ark of the Covenant in the Spielberg movie. A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING - John R. Oneal (New York Times, 2/1/00)

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