|
I will always love this book, because it gave me Dave Eggers. He made me cry. I was going through my own heartbreak when I first picked it up, so maybe that has something to do with the immediate emotional attachment I felt to his story, but I suspect his undeniable talent had something to do with it as well. He made me laugh. He made me want to write a novel. I could have done without the gimmicky bookends, but they by no means took away from my enjoyment of this heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and, now that I see what Egger's has gone on to do with his rock star status, I can appreciate those quirky touches, which remain in tact to this day & in full evidence in the way he presents McSweeneys & The Believer, as well as his passion for kids & making words fun.
Don't be put off by the title. This book is worth reading because you'll spend a lot of it laughing out loud and wanting to read it to your friends.
since there didn't seem to be any point to eggers' tale, i can't imagine that i missed much anyway. like many other reviewers who found this book distasteful, i got so sick and tired of eggers' wandering, random pomposity that i put the book down two chapters short of the end. i have no doubt that eggers has potential to be a clever writer if he can gain a little humility. i have never gotten so close to the end of a book without feeling any desire to finish it. i didn't even bother reading the last page, because by the time i finally surrendered, my distaste for the often completely unnecessarily verbose writing far outweighed my mild curiosity to know how the story ends. however, i would skip over this early work. as a full time non-traditional student supporting myself, i find very little time to read recreationally, and i very much wish that i had not waited so long to put this book down for good.
I bought this because I thought I would really like it. It was not clever and was a poor gimmick to do a massive info-dump. I found it just very self-absorbed and *trying* to be funny.
Just the preface and "rules" of the book clued me in. Maybe it's because I saw his more responsible side. In the end, I felt sort of "meh" about it-- which is sad, considering how powerful the subject matter should be.First, yes, the author is tremendously long-winded.
I skimmed.But opposite of many other reviewers, the book actually grew on me about halfway through, and I'm not sure how to explain that. I couldn't believe an editor actually let that happen. I didn't find it funny.
There were several things initially that bothered me about his parenting, from the way he doesn't help his brother get ready in the mornings to the gross state of the house (and don't get me started on the use of the word "retard" and the other nasty little references to developmentally disabled people in the book).It left me screaming inside, "Was there no other person in the family who could have helped them NOT live like that." But there are also plenty of endearing moments where it's clear he loves his brother and wants to do right by him, just with different values from mine.The MTV "interview" was ridiculous, and could have been cut in its entirety. There are spots of brilliance in this book-- lines I wish I'd written, paragraphs that gave me chills-- but there are way too many stream-of-conscious ramblings that needed a much fatter red pen from an editor, in my opinion.
I never received this book because it got sent to the wrong address. I didn't find out till several weeks after I ordered it and reviewed the invoice in my email.
|
