About this title: 'Heartbreaking? Certainly. Staggering? Yes, I'd say so. And if genius is capturing the universal in a fresh and memorable way, call it that too' - Anthony Quinn, "Sunday Times". 'Is this how all orphans would speak - 'I am at once pitiful and monstrous, I know' - if they had Dave Eggers' prodigious linguistic gifts. For he does write wonderfully, ...
read more
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780375725784ISBN:0375725784
Description: Good. Brown about an inch in length along the right side of the front cover and along the outside edging of the first few pages. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780375725784ISBN:0375725784
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Used. Trade paperback edition. Slight rubbing damage to corners and edges. Cover shows some scuffing. All books are boxed and ship via USPS with delivery confirmation. read more
Description: Very Good. 0330484559 Almost Like New-**Softcover**--Exact ISBN Match--Cover is nearly pristine. No personalizations, writing or marks in the text. Clean, Tight and Neat. Absolutely no spine creasing. Ships Quickly-IN STOCK-Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780375725784ISBN:0375725784
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Very light edge and corner wear. No marks. Tight, square book. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 496 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780684863474ISBN:0684863472
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. DJ has slight shelf wear; some pages near middle of book are slightly wrinkled; lightly tanned pages appear to be unmarked. read more
Edition: Reprint.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA, New York
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780375725784ISBN:0375725784
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 496 p. Audience: General/trade. Beautiful copy. Totally clean & unmarked inside & out. Corners sharp. Just a hint of wear. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2001-02-13
ISBN-13:9780375725784ISBN:0375725784
Description: Very Good. Binding is tight and square. Text is clean, bright and unmarked. Has some light edge and corner wearCareful packaging and fast shipping. We recommend EXPEDITED MAIL for even faster delivery! read more
"Before I picked up this book I had heard endless tales of how wonderfully smart and funny this book was, how terrific the writing was and how the originality would slap me in the face like a cool wind on a summer's day. They were wrong. I hated this book like The Cure hates happiness.
I understand writer's have their own style, and that is what, in and of itself, separates them from all the others. But, seriously, we learn paragraph breaks for a reason. It gives the mind's eye ( totally thieved that phrase from Mr. Tomblin) a break, a breather. Eggers, a rebel in his own mind, discards such mannerisms.
Aside from that debilitating hindrance, the book is THE example for egotism gone awry. Now, before you start, yes, I am aware that a memoir book is, essentially, an ego stroke. But the good writers, they have the ability to make you forget that it's merely self-indulgence, sweep you up in their lives...in their story. Rather than want to beg the author in so many ways as to warrant that 500 feet order to invite you over, Eggers is the kind of guy you would actually go out of your way to avoid."
"I had problems with Dave Eggers for a long time. Having never read a word he'd written, I immaturely thought I had every right to hate him. He was young, successful, and adored by critics. That was enough right there. When it first came out, I would see AHWOSG in the bookstore and grimace at it (more than once, I even gave it the evil eye). My loathing was out of sheer jealousy. I recognized it as such back then, but still carried on. It's hard to let go of things sometimes.
OK. Fast forward three or four years. I still have a lot of pent up animosity for those writers who are so far ahead of me. However, this fear, thinly cloaked as a juicy eccentricity has dissipated a great deal upon reading Eggers' triumphant, naked, brutally pure and dramatically veracious window into a life bereft of normalcy.
What is normalcy? Nobody knows (and quite frankly, nobody should care), but I'll tell you what it's not: having to deal with the death of both your parents within mere months of each other. That just doesn't happen to people. On the rare and awful occassions when it does, the children involved are devastated. It happened to Eggers and his siblings. When his mother died, he was left to share custody of his younger brother Toph. Still just a child, Toph grew up under the sometimes bizarre, always concerned eye of his older brother Dave.
The center of AHWOSG is truly the great and hilarious relationship Eggers has with Toph. To try to describe how they both grew up together in the strange and bumpy post-parental freedom-for-all (with strict rules of obtaining said freedom) would be detrimental to the experiences you can have in Eggers' world. So we won't venture further. Rest assured, there's a seal-tight bond there, one few can probably relate to.
Smirking just on the borders of the author's fatherly/brotherly/friendly/loving/do-right-for-the-little-jerk attitude is the fully-aware-of-everything-that-is-and-is-not persona that he is constantly invoking and daring to take him just one step further... just to the brink... just to push him off. His emotions are bloody rare, like a T-Bone rippling with E. coli. His running, inner monologue and occasional tabooed thoughts are cut from his heart with a dull spork and served to the reader à la mode--as if the sweet, cold vanilla sub-thought could lighten the mood. It does. And his words never fail to render a heartbreaking, poetic, screaming justice for his soul.
I ate it up. I wanted more. I swallowed my jealousy and loved it."
"This memoir sings. I really cannot say enough wonderful things about it. It is angry, and hopeful, and joyful, and hilarious, and touching, and wonderfully alive. I pretty much couldn't put it down. Who cares abut writerly skill and pacing and characterization, even if all these elements are solid and well deserving of the critical acclaim it has received? This book is about a gut response, not an intellectual one. Go read it."
"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."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
