A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

I was put off this book for years simply by the title. It irritated me in so many ways I couldn't begin to think about articulating which most annoyed me. Then, eventually, I read 'You shall know our Velocity' and loved it. So when a friend was having a clear out I took the chance of something for nothing and grabbed AHWOSG.

Having read it now I have a huge fondness for what Eggers has written. It is a recollection of how he handled the death of both his parents. He was barely a man, forced to look after his younger brother while his older siblings got on with life. This is a story or a young man, forced to become a parent and learn to live as an adult while the world moves on, forgets him, and lives its own life. A life of peers going to parties, a life of university and study, of young life missed.

Eggers is angry with everything, angry with everyone. Daring them to challenge him and provoking them into wondering if he's ok but denying them the vulnerability of a revelation. He's unwilling to look mortality in the face, flees from the deaths of his parents and protects his brother from every harm and hurt he can conceive of.

Eventually he remembers the last days, the pain, the loss, the simply not knowing what the hell anyone can do to make it better. The knowing there is nothing to be done but not being able to escape - perhaps even when it's over. The dead are dead after all. It's the living who mourn.

I lost someone very close to me when I was his age. I sucked it in like he did. I don't think I was as angry but I was certainly as distant from the world. I lost my self in other options than Eggers - but the symptoms he expresses are the same as those I remember about myself. And so I can come back to the title now and tell you what I hated about it so much in the past; the simple fact that he dared to claim such a title. The temerity of it. How could he know what the words even meant.

I see now that he does. The title is all heart break covered by bravado, the look you sometimes see on the newly bereaved when you catch them unawares only for them to notice and hide the devastation that was momentarily so plain upon their face. Eggers writes as he once felt - the rage and incoherence of young maleness, of being a man and being faced with a grief so overwhelming one can only deny it and focus your fury on everyone else. Eventually the dam will break but not before it's carved new valleys in your soul and changed you forever. Death is never over, never forgotten and never moved on from. The death of others is survived and this book charts the survival of one young man. I think it affects me more now than when I was reading it.

It's not for everyone but if you've read my review and find you know what of I speak...well, find this book.