Wednesday, September 25, 2013

"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers

This book is another favorite of mine. It is a heartfelt story of a young man,  who loses both of his parents to cancer, and ends up being the sole caretaker of his eight-year old brother. Eggers is a brilliant writer. He is able to express his emotions with such precision that I found myself nodding in agreement more than a few times, knowing exactly how he must have felt. The thing that I liked the most is the way Eggers describes the feelings and thoughts of a new parent. Here is this young man who is still in college and has not figured out his own life, and all of a sudden he has the responsibility of taking care of a young child. He experiences all the fears and insecurities of first-time parents which a lot of us can relate to.

This book is the story of the two brothers' journey of learning to cope with the loss of their parents and trying to find their way in this world. It also asks the question of what constitutes a real family. Does every family have to have a mom, a dad and a kid? When my daughter was little I used to tell her: families are different, it can be a mom and a child, or a dad and a child, or grandparents and a child. In this story, the family is the two brothers. What matters is that they love and take care of each other.

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