taken from my live journal:

i finally got around to reading this after owning it for a couple of years. i'd always heard about how good it was, but to be honest, never really knew what it was about until i started reading it. although i'm normally a fiction-reader i've been finding myself enjoying memoirs a lot more lately and this is a memoir by a fairly young person about his life after the death of both of his parents, who died at around the same time of each other from cancer.

normally i have to admit that i wouldn't choose to read a book such as this as i'd be afraid i'd find it too depressing. however, although yes, at times the book was quite sad, it was not a manipulative tear-jerker and i appreciated it for that. the author describes what his life what was like for himself and his siblings, especially that of his younger brother who he ended up being in charge of. i appreciated the honesty and candour of what it's really like to face independence and at the same time having to be in charge of a sibling and all the worries and fears that go along with that, while at the same time going through ones twenties while one is trying figure out ones own life. there was a lot of depth in here and i also liked the attempts at surrealism when you are made aware that a character in the book is not necessarily exactly like the character in real life and that the character might even be a figment of the author's imagination as a different way of expressing his thoughts.

i wouldn't say that i loved this book, though, and that is mainly because about halfway through it kind of veers off course and feels like it turns into Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. by that i mean that the author gives us a view of what it is like for him and people of his generation who are trying to start-up a magazine and be cool and hip without trying to appear to be those things and it ends up feeling a little bit pretentious. to be fair, i think Eggers realises himself that they were pretentious. also, to be fair, i can't really blame him for writing about his attempts at a career at the time as it was obviously a major part of his life. i just wish the writing about that face of his life didn't feel so awkwardly different than the writing about what was going on in his home-life. but maybe that's just me.

all in all i wouldn't say that i overly enjoyed this book. i think it was rather hyped up and though of course i think he and his siblings deserve sympathy for what they went through, i also couldn't help but feel that it was a bit self-indulgent, which i guess if i were in the same situation i would want to be myself.

RELEASE NOTES:

Posted this today to dospescados as part of a relay. I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks!

sending via bookrelay to hunnyb, Kingsford, NSW, Australia after I read it