Review of a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, with its unique style that attracts the attention of the reader from the very beginning is a good example of self reflexive fiction. Self reflexive fiction, improving and changing from the time of Tristram Shandy has found a new life at the hands of Dave Eggers. He offers the reader to take an active role in his reading. "The Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book" section addresses directly to the reader saying "if you have already read the preface and wish you had not, we apologize"or he begins the second part saying "Please look. Can you see us?"At the end, the book becomes very much self reflexive as he addresses to the millions who are reading him in nearly two full pages. When readers have a bigger role in the novel, the work becomes more meaningful to the reader rather than forgetting it after he reads the last page. It is a fact that "the reader can be fascinated either by the tale only or by the telling of the tale, which keeps him inside the fiction." In this book we are fascinated by both the tale and the way Eggers tells his story. He is the author, the protagonist and also the narrator of the story. He uses irony, playfullness and digression. It can be said that this way of writing is "a complete mess, disorder, deliberate chaos, fragmentation and dislocation" but those factors interestingly make the story unified and complete. By using these new properties of fiction, he brings together the fragments and forms a nice story. For example, while he is telling about their ride in the car, he suddenly begins to visualize their being driven off the cliff and and down into the ocean. He usually uses fragments and frames like this.

In the book there is always a relati...

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... I have found the same naturality and the flow of language in this book. They both use the the "stream of consciousness" technique to make their stories more vivid and it is really very hard to close the book and take a break once you start reading. As a reader, it is nice to see creative ideas like the unique title, the rules and suggestions for the enjoyment of the book at the beginning or the drawings in the book that show their sliding place with their socks at home. His approach to the reader is very cordial and from the very beginning, you become impatient to read the coming pages and find out the new innovations in his style. Obviously Eggers does not disappoint the reader and does his best to make the reader put the book in his top ten list without thinking much just after he finishes the book. It is exactly a "Heartbreaking work of staggering genius, Eggers."