A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

âe~Heartbreaking? Certainly. Staggering? Yes, Iâe(tm)d say so. And if genius is capturing the universal in a fresh and memorable way, call it that tooâe(tm) Anthony Quinn, Sunday Times âe~Is this how all orphans would speak âe" âeoeI am at once pitiful and monstrous, I knowâe âe" if they had Dave Eggersâe(tm)s prodigious linguistic gifts? For he does write wonderfully, and this is an extremely impressive debutâe(tm) John Banville, Irish Times âe~A virtuosic piece of writing, a big, daring, manic-depressive stew of a book that noisily announces the debut of a talented âe" yes, staggeringly talented âe" new writerâe(tm) âe" Michiko Kakutani, New York Times âe~Exhilarating . . . Profoundly moving, occasionally angry and often hilarious . . . A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is, finally, a finite book of jest, which is why it succeeds so brilliantlyâe(tm) âe" New York Times Book Review âe~What is really shocking and exciting is the bookâe(tm)s sheer rage. AHWOSG is truly ferocious, like any work of genius. Eggers âe" self-reliant, transcendent, expansive âe" is Emersonâe(tm)s ideal Young American. [The book] does itself justice: it is a settling of accounts. And it is almost too good to be believedâe(tm) âe" London Review of Books âe~A hilarious book . . . In it, literary gamesmanship and self-consciousness are trained on lifeâe(tm)s most unendurable experience, used to examine a memory too scorching to stare at, as one views an eclipse by projecting sunlight onto paper through a pinholeâe(tm) âe" Time âe~Eggers evokes the terrible beauty of youth like a young Bob Dylan, frothing with furious anger . . . He takes us close, shows us as much as he can bear . . . His book is a comic and moving witness that transcends and transgresses formal boundariesâe(tm) âe" Washington Post