The Decade's Best First Chapter

Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" (AHWOSG) has rightly been the recipient of much praise since its publication in March 2000. But to call Eggers' "AHWOSG" a memoir almost does not seem right. Yes, the subject matter is the deaths of both Eggers' parents from cancer within months of each other, and Eggers' subsequent assumption of responsibility for raising his younger brother Toph. Yet, in the facetious "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of this Book" that precedes the book's preface, and in a lengthy interview for the MTV show "The Real World" that digresses into a fictionalized conversation with Toph on the nature and purpose of memoir writing midway through, Eggers transcends the form. His writing is smart-ass and earnest; nowhere more so than in the first chapter.

In what is the most straightforward bit of "AHWOSG," Eggers' first chapter is an unsentimental and honestly-written double narrative — the first a close account of his mother's death, the second of his father's death. Shifting smoothly from the first person, present tense style he employs while writing about his mother to the third person, past tense style utilized in the sections about his father, Eggers' prose is spare, yet descriptive. He leaves nothing out — the feel of his mother's skin under his fingers as he attempts to stop a severe nose bleed, the sight of dryer exhaust billowing away from the house. The details are not lush, there is nothing extravagant about the language he uses. The details are, if anything, mundane, but the careful structure he gives every scene renders each episode fully, and the chapter builds to a cathartic end.

— Jessica Chapel (jnc at flakmag dot com)