30 Books in 30 Beach Days Day 7: "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"

I absolutely loved this book.

I don’t say that often, because typically if I like a book, I don’t like all of it—I find a plot element less than credible, or I don’t find the story authentic, or sometimes I just don’t like any of the characters. This one, though, I loved—and I had all the emotions. I laughed, I cried, I thought about my own life and my own family. The title is tongue and cheek, but it’s also true; this really is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

You would not think that a (slightly fictionalized) memoir about a college senior who loses both parents to cancer within the span of months and becomes his eight-year-old brother’s guardian would be a page-turner, but it is. Eggers does an incredible job conveying the gravity of the situation in which he finds himself—as well as the bevy of emotions he feels, from grief to resentment to tenderness for his siblings—while maintaining a comic’s lightness and a twenty-something’s resilience. The novel is touching, and sad, but mostly it’s real. Reading it made me want to meet and befriend the author (and his little brother), and that’s a rare kind of genius.

Rating: 5/5.

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