A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
 |
|
| Author | Dave Eggers |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Komar and Melamid |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
|
Publication date
|
2000 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 375 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 42667954 |
| LC Class | CT275.E37 A3 2000 |
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius () is a memoir by Dave Eggers released in 2000. It chronicles his stewardship of younger brother Christopher "Toph" Eggers following the cancer-related deaths of his parents.
The book was an enormous commercial and critical success, reaching number one on The New York Times bestseller list and being nominated as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. Time magazine and several newspapers dubbed it "The Best Book of the Year". Critics praised the book for its wild, vibrant prose, and it was described as "big, daring [and] manic-depressive" by The New York Times. The book was chosen as the 12th best book of the decade by The Times.
The book's primary story is Dave's learning to be both brother and parent to Toph. It starts out with Dave, Toph, and Beth dealing with their mother and father's stomach and lung cancer sickness. After their parents' death, Dave, Toph, and Beth's lives become complicated. The three children move from Illinois to California.
Beth lives on her own at first, and Toph becomes Dave's responsibility. Dave, a man only in his early 20s, has to raise a child as if he were his own. Dave's life can no longer involve things many 20-year-olds would like to do. For example, Dave can not stay out of the house all night at the bar and bring home a different girl every week, something which he talks about wanting to do in his book in detail.
With the help of an inheritance and Social Security, Dave and Toph rent apartments in neighborhoods where Toph can go to private schools and Dave can work on his magazine venture. Dave is occasionally self-conscious about the cleanliness of their various homes and worries that other people will mistakenly find him unfit to parent Toph, but counterbalances these images with recollections of including Toph in fun activities (frisbee, for example) and cooking, laundering, and driving for Toph.
...
Wikipedia