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You Shall Know Our Velocity!

3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 · rating details · 17,566 ratings · 1,191 reviews

In his first novel, Dave Eggers has written a moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss. It reminds us once again what an important, necessary talent Dave Eggers is.

Paperback, 368 pages

Published July 1st 2003 by Vintage (first published September 2002)

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Dec 15, 2008 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Preface to the fourth edition:

I wrote this a few years ago, back when I had just finished reading the book, but before I had died. I still haven't died so that's beside the point. I'm procrastinating right now, and copying this from another site where this originally appeared.

Original Preface
There are three ways that I pick out books to read. One is through the convoluted and serpentine way that I choose most of my books. The second way is by catchy covers promising pop-culture hipness. This sec...more

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Jun 22, 2007 Joe rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People willing to go out and blow $12.99

Shelves: fiction

Hey main character, are you upset about something? Is nothing working out for you? AWWWWWW poor baby! Did you experience a personal loss that you found painful? Oh no! You must be the first person ever to feel pain! I feeeeeel sooooooo baaaaaaaaad for you! Are you going to tell us what happened? Oh, you'd rather give it to us bit by bit to keep up the suspense? Ok, that works (pbbbbttttt). Do you find things in normal everyday life hard to take, Holden Caulfield? Do you want to share with us exp...more

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Aug 20, 2007 Mark rated it 1 of 5 stars

The title of this novel is a misnomer. The protagonists -- Will and Hand -- are miserably slow and plodding. Full of piss and vinegar, but with little to actually back it up.

Basically, they plan to fly around the world in a week and give away $32,000. They make it to Africa and Eastern Europe. That's it. And the back of the book reads, "$32,000 must be given away in a week, around the world. But why?" That question is never answered.

Not only is the book's flow sluggish, but it's a complete min...more

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Sep 07, 2007 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm a little torn here, because I feel like I was supposed to like this book, so part of me wants to pretend that I didn't like it. It just seems so blatantly directed at exactly who I am, a late 20's person confused about what direction to take in life. It's like a movie where you know they are trying to make you cry, and you do cry, and then feel bad about it because you know that they played you like a fiddle.
But as much as I'd like to resist it, I am a fiddle and this book played me. I iden...more

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Jul 06, 2011 Suzanne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: metafictional-madness-and-pomo-fun

I loved the writing, I really did. Imaginative and colorful and funny. There was just too much of it.

I think the whole book could have been trimmed by 20 to 30 percent and been much more enjoyable. It’s divided into 3 parts, and in my edition they have ratios that are almost too mathematically precise to be a coincidence. The first 250 pages were Will’s first person account of his and his friend Hand’s frantic, limited-to-one-week, global travels trying to unload $32,000 in cash through various...more I loved the writing, I really did. Imaginative and colorful and funny. There was just too much of it.

I think the whole book could have been trimmed by 20 to 30 percent and been much more enjoyable. It’s divided into 3 parts, and in my edition they have ratios that are almost too mathematically precise to be a coincidence. The first 250 pages were Will’s first person account of his and his friend Hand’s frantic, limited-to-one-week, global travels trying to unload $32,000 in cash through various bizarre schemes. The reader is left mostly in the dark, except for some cryptic references, as to why, and particularly, why this method. These two are supposed to be in their late 20s, but behave like 8 year olds on a cupcake binge (OK, 8 year olds who go to nightclubs and hang out with hookers). The story was actually an intriguing and humorous concept, punctuated by Will’s angst, the origins of which remain (irritatingly) mysterious.

The middle section is Hand’s explication of Will’s story, and it’s exactly 50 pages, bringing in a lot of meta-fictional elements such as his talking about the story as if it were a history of a real trip, which Will (before his death) had fictionalized to some extent, which Hand does not understand or approve of, when their original intent had been to create a “Performance Literature” piece. [This reference to Will’s death is not a spoiler, as it is disclosed on the first page of the book.] Hand’s explanation of their purposes, to proactively set events in motion in order to record them, his speculations about the reasons for Will’s fabrications, and his reference to some parallel events between occurrences in Will’s narrative and his own “life” after the fact all get very post-modern and self-reflexive. Now I’m having fun! I also liked Hand’s comparing the book to a Sacrament (said to be the original title of the book).

But alas, then we go back to Will’s story, another 100 pages exactly (with new insights because of Hand’s interlude), and again it seems to drag and bog down for me although, with the new information, it is better than the first part.

In addition to some philosophizing about money, poverty, charity and the relationship of haves and have-nots within the context of the giving, this also may be an allegory about our rushing around madly in life trying to find a purpose and meaning and too often it’s all wrapped up with our concerns about money.

All in all, I have to give it a 3, maybe 3-1/2, mostly for the writing and creative treatment and humor. It did need a ruthless editor, though, and I think the book would have been much improved had a machete been taken to much of the first section. I may try another of Egger’s book, because I did enjoy his language skills. There is certainly some talent there. And I really liked a movie that he and his wife wrote a couple of years ago called “Away We Go.”
(less)

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Feb 11, 2008 Igor rated it 5 of 5 stars

I heart Dave Eggers. This book is awesome, especially if you enjoy traveling in obscure countries and dissecting ridiculous adventures for meaning. Eggers' style is very sticky and his humor is right in my wheelhouse. I liked this book significantly more than "A Heartbreaking Work..." (which was a fun read nonetheless). Something about the fact that it's a true novel and not quite as self-indulgent and autobiographical.

Anyway, I only feel slightly silly saying this is one of my favorite books. A...more

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Jun 17, 2010 julieta rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: young-americans

Before I get into the story of this book, and what I thought about it, I have to start with this. I LOVE the paper it's made of!! Really! It makes me want to write, in a typewriter, and live in some far off place, the color, the texture, wow, I tried to find out what they used but there is no information on the subject. I think I probably finished the book because of that wonderful paper it is made of. With paper like this, how can I even consider going on to electronic books?

Now, for the story...more

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Oct 07, 2012 oriana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: phenomenal, read-2012, read-2008, read-2010

The thing I remember most strongly about this book is just toodling along, minding my own business, and then boom! pow! meta! mmmmmmmetametametameta! META!. Did Dave Eggers invent meta? For me, he invented meta. And no one, before or after or since or whenever, will come close to giving me that gasping shocked awe. Fuck off, haters; I love him so so so.

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May 08, 2011 Praveen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Love the style of the prose, it is at times erudite and at times completely utterly batshit insane! I've only read about 20% so far and this is what I've gathered: Will, the protagonist and narrator posed for a light bulb advertisement (a silhouette of himself fixing a bulb while on a step ladder) by Leo Burnett and as payment for his services received a stock option in the light bulb company. In short he is 80K richer and hasn't figured out what to do with all the money also he got "the shit ki...more Love the style of the prose, it is at times erudite and at times completely utterly batshit insane! I've only read about 20% so far and this is what I've gathered: Will, the protagonist and narrator posed for a light bulb advertisement (a silhouette of himself fixing a bulb while on a step ladder) by Leo Burnett and as payment for his services received a stock option in the light bulb company. In short he is 80K richer and hasn't figured out what to do with all the money also he got "the shit kicked out of him by three guys in a storage garage" a few days back (all of this is revealed bit by bit as Will narrates the story in a neurotic fashion), Will is a philosopher of sorts and carries on imaginary conversations with himself and the people in front of him, these take the form of debates in his head and Will describes his mind as a "hummingbird" shooting this way and that between opposing views searching for truth and certainty. Truth, according to him is spherical it has no two sides.

Will wants to piss his money away and gets the help of Hand, his best friend since kindergarten (The two of them have three years of college between them). Hand is a strange fellow having done many odd jobs, he is like a sponge that soaks up information, from zinc mining to ebola he is a walking information source of "truths, half truths and apocrypha". They "plan" a week long trip around the world starting off in Greenland and then to Mongolia, Madagascar etc. Suffice it to say that things don't really go according to plan and two days into the week they are stuck in hotel lobby in Dakar, Senegal having flown first class with 1600$ tickets (Will's last car cost only 800$).

So far the story is about this road trip. Will is running away from some sort of personal tragedy the details of which is not at all clear at this point. Hand is just cruising along and wants to get to Egypt so that he can climb the Cheops pyramid. It feels a lot like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (minus the drugs) but I might change my mind about this as the story progresses. Smart, witty and erudite this is a black comedy on existential angst that must not be missed.(less)

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Jan 16, 2009 Jamie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Two close friends decide to travel around the world in a week and give away $32,000 to random people. This includes creating a treasure map for children in Estonia and delivering a bouquet of flowers to a sleeping family in Senegal. Their adventures are comical, and easy to relate to if you've ever gone on a trip with not much planning. The results of this journey are unexpected eye-opening experiences and a few disappointments (Morocco looks a little like Arizona). Through all their travels and...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Kate Z rated it 3 of 5 stars

I will start this by saying "I love Dave Eggers." My next thought is that his editor(s) all too often don't do him any favors. This thought is not my own - the credit goes to my friend Joanna who said it first - but this 400 page novel should have been maybe 250 pages. I thought the same was true for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. With that said, there was a lot (too much!) that I loved about this novel. My real complaint about the novel is that there was too much of it.

I understand...more I will start this by saying "I love Dave Eggers." My next thought is that his editor(s) all too often don't do him any favors. This thought is not my own - the credit goes to my friend Joanna who said it first - but this 400 page novel should have been maybe 250 pages. I thought the same was true for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. With that said, there was a lot (too much!) that I loved about this novel. My real complaint about the novel is that there was too much of it.

I understand (from above friend Joanna) that YSKOV was originally a long story first published in the New Yorker. Joanna (and her sister) read it and thought it was "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius." The story was then (apparently) re-worked into a novel, in which form I read it. I have searched and searched for the New Yorker version and if anyone has it and wants to send it to me I'd LOVE to see it/read it. The novel was good; I'm lead to understand that the story was genius.

There were definitely moments of genius in the novel form. Coming from me this is a HUGE compliment; in fact it's just about the highest form of praise I can bestow on a writer: Eggers, for me, is a kind of modern Shakespeare. He has his finger so firmly on the pulse of humanity that sometimes I have to just stop reading and think and absorb the genius of it all.

The moment I knew that I loved William Shakespeare I was sitting in a very dark theater watching a local production of As You Like It during my freshman year of college. Orlando came on stage - loveless and alone in the forest - and he came upon all these love notes posted on the trunks of the surrounding trees. As he reads more and more of them he muses out loud: "Oh how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes." That moment was light a lightbulb for me. I was alone in a strange city and that sentiment rang so true. How could Shakespeare have understood that exact thought that I had almost 400 years before?

A similar moment happened for me in You Shall Know Our Velocity! when Hand and Will (narrator/main character) are in Marrakesh and Will breaks down in the street over the grief he feels for their mutual friend Jack, who died in a freak accident some 6 months prior. All of a sudden, quite out of the blue, the permanence of Jack's death hits Will squarely and he literally falls to the ground weeping. Will and Hand go on to talk about it, about their loss, about coming to terms with the reality of loss over the course of about 5 pages and those five pages were the best written testament to grief and loss that I can ever remember reading. Perhaps it is because I experienced a similar loss also about 6 months ago that this particular explication felt so "real" for me but I would put Eggers' writing about this subject up there with the best.

The novel is a "bildungsroman" in its purest, best form and if you're not in the mood to watch/understand as two young twenty-something Americans in the mid to late 90s come of age then you probably aren't going to come to appreciate this novel the way that I did. The main storyline is that Will and Hand, best friends in their twenties who are somewhat adrift decide to travel around the world with money that WIll has recently been given and give the money away. They have a week in which to do this because that is the amount of time that Hand can take off from work.

The premise is both preposterous and appealing - and one that you can readily ascribe to two young men in their twenties. It's neither fully fleshed out or logical but it is born from a need to DO something. Anything. It's almost cliche to say that Will and Hand are adrift, looking for meaning and purpose in their lives so recently scarred by the death of their third best friend, Jack. But it's exactly for this reason that the story works - because Will and Hand are both characters unto themselves and representatives of a greater segment of American society at large. They have grand ideas but no real means to implement them, although they bumble about and try. Even their names suggest the forces competing here. They have the *will* and want to *hand* out money to people .... but figuring out how to do that, without demeaning themselves or the people receiving their money turns out to be more complicated than they imagined. Such is life.

They concoct a plan to fly around the world as the world turns, staying just ahead of the revolving earth, thereby never really losing time. To Greenland! To Siberia! Mongolia! And then, suddenly, they realize they've forgotten about the International Date Line ... and while they think they're avoiding time, tricking it, actually once they cross the IDL now it's time playing a trick on them and they'll lose everything they've gained. Such is life.

Eggers has a wonderful way of writing to the heart of the matter and his language in that way reminds me of Hemingway - perhaps not because his language is so sparse and bare but there are moments of perception that just cut you dead with their simplicity, like a flashlight suddenly shone into a dark corner. Language and wordiness are not where Eggers' editor(s) fail him; what Eggers could use is someone to rein in his storytelling just a bit. When Will and Hand fail to make it out of Chicago en route to Greenland Eggers could have left well enough alone. But because one misstep was funny and enlightening he thought perhaps two would drive the point home further. The same for their day in Senegal. In a book about traveling the world only to come home again one incident in Senegal was enough - 75 pages devoted to the misadventures there over the course of one day (and multiple trips to the airport) begs for more editorial powers.

Like any good travel narrative, going around the world and meeting up with peoples and cultures not your own often teaches you more about yourself than about the places you are traveling to. So it was in You Shall Know Our Velocity!.

3.75 stars(less)

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Jun 05, 2013 Ted Burke rated it 2 of 5 stars

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Apr 29, 2010 Sarah Wingo rated it 2 of 5 stars

Really 2 1/2 stars

I'm not sure what to say about this book really. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it. I very often found myself enjoying Eggers's writing style while being annoyed with the story itself.

I don't really understand what it is with male writers that makes them want so badly to write these books about disillusioned young men who are basically losers. I mean this book is essentially Catcher in the Rye for people in their late 20s. I don't know I just have a problem with characters in...more

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Aug 11, 2008 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 16, 2008 stuart rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to stuart by: Alex & Katy

I’m glad I read this although I had conflicting opinions all throughout the book.

The writing is unique and interesting and Eggers clearly has a powerful gift with words. The story is also challenging and thoughtful and I was continually fascinated by the concept. I loved the journey they took, and the juxtaposition Eggers creates between their being both constrained and liberated in their travels.

However, I don’t know if I love the execution. I found it to be a real effort to read and after a c...more

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Jul 17, 2008 selena rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: popular-culture

I’ve been reading You Shall Know Our Velocity (currently re-titled to Sacrament) for over a month. Usually, when school is out, and it is, I average about a week to a week and a half on any given book. I haven’t finished it and I must tell you, the problem isn’t me. For once.

I’m half-way through the book and thus far, aside from traveling to a few countries and trying to tape money on goats (I’m pretty sure it was goats), nothing has happened. I know that the main character’s face is severely me...more

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Feb 25, 2008 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Alex by: Julie Adams

I was hesitant to read this upon Julie's recommendation, because the basic premise turned me off. A pair of friends have just lost their other best mate. They hatch a plan to travel around various corners of the world handing out at random large sums of money, until they have completely exhausted their quite significant savings. By the way, that is all revealed in the first few pages, so nothing is spoiled.

My first reaction was that this seemingly cathartic and symbolic gesture didn't pass liter...more

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Sep 26, 2007 Mary Rose rated it 3 of 5 stars

Though this book is compared to On The Road, the similarities stop at both books being about travelling. While Kerouac describes, with compassion and care, his fellow human beings, Eggers draws broad sketches of the people he meets.

The main character, Will, doesn't change. The most worthwhile conversations he has are in his own mind, in which he makes up responses for the people he is talking to. This does absolutely nothing to further the plot.

There are some truly beautiful moments in the book...more

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Jul 08, 2007 Anna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Dave Eggers is my favorite author. Witty, insightful, self mocking and disturbingly familiar. Anyone who has read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius knows what I’m talking about. A blurb on the back claims Eggers can “inspire a generation as much as document it,” that seems pretty apt. Maybe we are of the same generation and this feeling of insufferable privileged ennui is a common thread of our time.
Given $80,000 for the use of his silhouette on the side of a box of light bulbs, Will de...more

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Jan 21, 2008 Caroline rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i love dave eggers. this is the main character describing how his mind works (he sits at a desk at the top of a grassy hill overlooking a meadow and stream, and the library is inside the hill and is staffed by little pale, oily, hairless people that look like moles):

"And as much as I value the efficiency and professional elan of the library staff, I'd begun recently to worry about a new wrinkle in their procedures. For the most part, they're supposed to act on my requests when I make requests, a...more

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Apr 13, 2008 Betsy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Dave Eggers writes beautifully, yet his novel never seems to inspire any connection between the reader and the characters. The plot line seemed familiar, two young men, without plans traveling the world. The impetus for the trip seems to be the death of a childhood friend. The two remaining friends, the main Character who hasn't done much with his life and Hand, a good looking, risk taking, non motivated individual decide to give away a large sum of cash that the main character has acquired. The...more

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Oct 28, 2007 Keith rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone feeling a little lost

I stumbled across this book randomly at the bookstore. I had read mcsweenys and the believer a few times here and there but i actually had no idea that Dave Eggers had any novels. I got excited when i saw his name on the front of the book so I scooped it right up and I am glad I did.

I think had a read this book three months ago I wouldn't have appreciated it the same way i do now but it came into my life at a time when I was having a lot of the same feelings as the books main character Will. Don...more

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Jul 19, 2007 Tori rated it 3 of 5 stars

There's something a little frustrating about Dave Eggers. I genuinely think that he is a wonderful, gifted writer. He captures certain moments so completely and beautifully that I'm astounded past the point of envy. But he doesn't know when to quit. This is a fault I'm finding in a lot of contemporary writers like Michael Chabon and David Foster Wallace; as gifted as they are, they seem to lose their focus in the enjoyment of hearing/reading themselves. Wallace is particularly bad at this (I don...more

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Mar 23, 2007 Aaron rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An unfortunate sophmore slump. Eggers tries to follow up the critically acclaimed and highly enjoyable A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius with a more trifling novel, but he aims for nothing and hits just that. The premise kept me hoping for a catharsis or point of any kind but the novel just goes nowhere.

The hardback edition, however, is one of the coolest books that I own. The text actually starts on the front cover of the book and continues from there. His unusual font choice and the in...more

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May 14, 2010 Lindsaygail rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010, emory-book-party

It's hard to know what to say about this one, and I'm not going to be able to sum it up in any meaningful way. I really enjoy the way that Dave Eggers writes most of the time, but often I want to grab him by the shoulders and suggest he calm down a little. His characters are so full of big ideas it's easy to get caught up in their enthusiasm, but sometimes they seem to display a complete absence of good sense and that can get frustrating after awhile. On the whole, I liked and was somewhat confu...more

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Mar 05, 2009 Casey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes, I feel guilty about traveling and not appreciating where I'm at. Especially when I find myself shuffling through slush at all hours of the day and night in this all too familiar corner of the world. But nevertheless, when confronted with great beauty, I'm sometimes looking for a more fulfilling achievement or vista. Like, "this view is nice, but it does lack a certain couch-like feel that I've grown fond of, or at least accustomed to." Dave Eggers' fiction work here feels a lot like h...more

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May 26, 2013 Sade rated it 1 of 5 stars

OK, Im fairly certain this isn't the *worst* book I've ever read. However, it hopefully will be the worst book I read this year - if by worst you mean, as I do, grating, annoying, and purposeless. This book should be subtitled First World Fratboy Problems or perhaps A Patience-Trying Work of Staggering Douchebaggery ("We have sooo much money, and we just can't find the right peasants to give it away to!") That isn't a direct quote - BUT ALMOST.

Really, there might be a story here; but the author...more OK, Im fairly certain this isn't the *worst* book I've ever read. However, it hopefully will be the worst book I read this year - if by worst you mean, as I do, grating, annoying, and purposeless. This book should be subtitled First World Fratboy Problems or perhaps A Patience-Trying Work of Staggering Douchebaggery ("We have sooo much money, and we just can't find the right peasants to give it away to!") That isn't a direct quote - BUT ALMOST.

Really, there might be a story here; but the author decides not to tell it except by allusion. The book is three-quarters of the way done before you get anything more than Whiteboy Travelogue, and ye gods, that's a lot of whining about being stuck in Dakkar to put up with in hopes something will actually happen.

Should I have posted a spoiler alert? Because I just gave you the bulk of the plot right there. Two guys with a bunch of money go travelling in hopes of giving it away - in the most condescendingly clueless suburban pink boy ways possible. The subplot never develops, despite having a dead friend, an unexplained beating, a mother who might be encroaching on senility and oh! did I forget the plot twist from the beginning? Yeah - yeah I did. Because it is never mentioned again til the end AND REALLY NOT EVEN THEN, by which point, who cares?! You had your little slumming adventure, got rid of the money but not the white guilt, and then, then, we are finally reminded that something happens after the book is *over* that sounds like its a lot more interesting than the waahngst we just slogged through. Too bad it isn't in this book.

If Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is anything like this one, its no wonder I can't remember if I ever read it. In fact forgetting might be merciful. Let me also point out that its one thing if an author doesn't know how to spell pachysandra, but that no editor corrected it - dude, did you forget to press F7 when you finished? Bonehead move! - wow. If you're a twenty-something white guy with too much money and a personality about half an inch deep, you might enjoy this, somehow. Everyone else is advised to use their velocity to accelerate way past this turkey.(less)

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Mar 25, 2013 Shimon rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure if I'm cut out for postmodern literature. Dave Eggers much-celebrated first novel (after the pseudo-memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) follows two friends who decide to travel around the world for a week, giving away approximately $32,000 randomly. The premise is certainly interesting, and the writing is often entertaining, but I think it occasionally was too aware of itself to really be a great novel.

The story is really one about grief - the grief these two friends s...more I'm not sure if I'm cut out for postmodern literature. Dave Eggers much-celebrated first novel (after the pseudo-memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) follows two friends who decide to travel around the world for a week, giving away approximately $32,000 randomly. The premise is certainly interesting, and the writing is often entertaining, but I think it occasionally was too aware of itself to really be a great novel.

The story is really one about grief - the grief these two friends share around the senseless death of a third friend a few months before, the grief the protagonist feels for his father's abandonment of his family as a child, the grief of being a drifting 20-something with no purpose in life. Perhaps, given Eggers' background, it's not a surprise, and I think he touches on these issues with realism and sensitivity.

To escape this grief - or, perhaps, to address it - the friends choose to fly around the world giving complete strangers bits of an absurd $32,000 windfall they recently acquired. What follows is an odd mix of hilarious travelogue, a meditation on the global sex industry, the role and power of rich Westerners, poverty in the third world, and more. This relatively entertaining and seemingly straightforward plot is laced with all sorts of odd episodes - internal monologues with imagined interlocutors, flashbacks to the events surrounding their friend's death, and plenty of opaque philosophizing. There's an odd moment in Senegal where a newly introduced character rhapsodizes about a 'fourth world' for a bit and then disappears - I felt like I was supposed to 'get' it, but I didn't. Maybe this is the fault of the reader and not the author, but I often felt like Eggers was trying to say something profound and I was just missing it.

I'd say my overall evaluation is that the book is uneven. There were bits where I genuinely felt Eggers really hit on a fantastic idea - a hilarious negotiation with a shopkeeper in Marrakesh, the weird-but-so-believable rubrics the friends use to choose who to give money to, the general zest for life he seems to be trying to convey. Yet other times the book's pacing was thrown off by obscure philosophizing and pop psychology. As I understand it, Eggers later wrote a 'frame' for the novel written from the perspective of the other friend which calls the entire reliability of the narrator into question. A classic postmodern move, perhaps, but not really for me.

So - at the end of the day, I think you'll find something worthwhile if you read the book. But it might not be your favorite piece of literature. Eggers is clearly a talent, but I wish he didn't know it.(less)

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Oct 13, 2012 Reid rated it 3 of 5 stars

Let me just say that I love Dave Eggers, both as a writer and as something of a literary institution. He had single-handedly, it seems to me, brought back into our collective awareness the immediacy and vitality of the literary journal and short form fiction.

This is an early work by Eggers and is...well...fairly strange. But in its own quirky way, it is a wonderful exploration of, among other things, grief, confusion, uncertainty, youth and impetuosity. Here's the deal: Will has come into a chun...more Let me just say that I love Dave Eggers, both as a writer and as something of a literary institution. He had single-handedly, it seems to me, brought back into our collective awareness the immediacy and vitality of the literary journal and short form fiction.

This is an early work by Eggers and is...well...fairly strange. But in its own quirky way, it is a wonderful exploration of, among other things, grief, confusion, uncertainty, youth and impetuosity. Here's the deal: Will has come into a chunk of money at about the same time that one of his two best friends is killed in a car accident. Will has some trouble coping with both of these facts and decides to go on a whirlwind African/European/Asian trip with his other best friend, Hand, where over a week they will go as far as they can (the original plan is for around the world, but this proves impractical) and give away as much of Will's money as they can while doing so. During the trip Will calls his mother and writes to his twin nieces (who he has nicknamed, delightfully, Mo and Thor) so realistically that they become part of the narrative.

A setup like this could devolve into just another buddy/travel book, but it veers far from any such triteness and into a weirdness that feels, at the same time, very intimate, immediate, and real. Will careens between emotions and has a restless mind that will not leave him in peace. Hand is impetuous and raw, with a sense of himself that feels neither truthful nor justified, but nonetheless makes him attractive to those around him, as many a free spirit does.

There's just one problem: according to Hand, who intervenes about 2/3 of the way into the novel, Will is an entirely unreliable narrator. I won't spoil the story for you by telling you just what Hand reveals, but it twists your head around and makes you take another look at everything that was written before and after. What is especially brilliant about this revelation, though, is that Hand himself is an unstable character and could be just as unreliable as Will. It makes for a comic and heartbreaking kind of confusion.

Here's the thing, though: what Eggers truly achieves (as does much of postmodernism at its best) is a challenge to our most cherished illusions. Because of the heartfelt nature of the composition and themes of the book, we suspect that Eggers may be writing from personal experience; that is one level of belief. We then become drawn into Will's narrative and allow it to become "real" for us, a second and complementary layer. As part of that narrative we come to know and love Hand, who then undercuts the reality all that has come before; a third layer. And though Hand's credibility is undermined in turn, we have come to know that both of these young men are just unstable enough that neither of them is entirely trustworthy. In other words, Eggers forces us to question our assumptions about what is real and our all-too-willing suspension of disbelief in the name of immersing ourselves in Story. While knowing that what Will writes is fiction, we want it to be "true"; if this were not so, Hand's revelations would be nothing but another part of the story. It is a wonderful conceit and expertly managed.

Unfortunately, the whole thing also feels a bit amateurish, as is fitting for a novel written by such a young man. It could be argued that this is an intentional form of storytelling on his part, but it really doesn't come off as such, more often reading like something written on notebook paper by a 16-year-old with delusions of grandeur who should be studying his geometry homework. Don't let this discourage you from reading this or other works by Eggers, though. His is one of a small number of voices in current American letters that are consistently worth reading.(less)

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Aug 14, 2012 Wolf Marie rated it 4 of 5 stars

There were large chunks that I enjoyed and then I questioned why I enjoyed it in the first place. The humor was dry but quirky. It was Kerouac meets Caulfield. The narration is neurotic, indulging, and irrational (while doing irrational-yet-trying-to-make-rational things). Through all their travels, they are attempting to learn coping mechanisms to deal with their friend's death. At times, they realize they are running; escaping; not actually growing with this death merely dying themselves in de...more

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About Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books, including his most recent, A Hologram for the King, about a struggling businessman pursuing a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In this novel the author takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of...more

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