A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

By Dave Eggers. This book is interesting not so much for its content but for the way it is written. Described as post-modern, it is a stream of consciousness memoir about two brothers, ages 22 and 8, whose parents die within weeks of each other and then their life together as the older brother becomes the caretaker and parent of the younger. I started it out feeling intrigued and interested. Their adventures and lived lifes were zany and sometime hilarious. But, it got long. It would have been better if it were 100 pages shorter. And there was too much "language" for my taste, even though I think my bar is set pretty low.

I liked this paragraph from the NYTimes book review

''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius'' is, finally, a book of finite jest, which is why it succeeds so brilliantly. Eggers's most powerful prose is often his most straightforward, relying on old-fashioned truth telling for its punch. In a scene that is moving, funny and terrible all at once, he returns to Lake Forest for the first time since his parents died and tries to scatter his mother's cremains into Lake Michigan. The ashes, which he is surprised to discover resemble cat litter instead of the biblical dust he was expecting, keep sticking to his sweaty palms. He spills some and stoops to pick them up, and in the process spills some more. Then he accidentally steps on them. He is aghast: ''I am a monster. My poor mother. She would do this without the thinking, without the thinking about thinking.''