As promised this is my book review (or at least an attempt at) of You Shall Know our Velocity by Dave Eggers.
You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers
The novel is essentially about two friends, Hand and Will, who are left $38,000 after their friend Jack dies when he is (in the most literal sense possible) run over by a truck whilst in his car. Hand and Will set out to travel to as many places in the world as possible in seven days on a mission to give out this money to the needy. This leads to a variety of hilarious and awkward senarios as the characters try and give out the money to people they know nothing about. Within this journey there is a bunch of literary metaphors all about loss and finding oneself, everything that you would probably expect from a literary novel from an author as reknowned as Dave Eggers.
Before I talk about what I thought of the book, I must confess that when I decided to write this review I soon realised that I actually wasn't sure exactly what I thought of it. The reason I had bought and read it in the first place was that I had read numerous short stories by Dave Eggers and found them to be nothing short of brilliant, all slightly off-centre stories yet edging into post-modern territory containing brilliantly clear and insightful (for want of a better word) ideas about the world. You Shall Know Our Velocity not so much. Afer I had finished reading it I thought it (or perhaps I) was missing something, so before I wrote this review I google searched some other reviews on the book and found this review which managed to articulate what I had been previously wondering. Eggers book is very good, but it doesn't seem to be up to his normal standard. The clarity and ounce of brilliance just doesn't seem to be there. Now I guess I COULD be missing something, it is a possibility but I couldn't help but be slightly disappointed with this novel after readng Eggers short stories.
That being said, I still recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading literary-type books or road-trip themed books or books about silly American males. After all I did finish the whole book. Something that doesn't occur often for me as I'm a picky reader, if I'm not interested, I won't finish it. I also highly reccomend Eggers short stories the most famous of which can be found in How We are Hungry, a collection of his short stories published by Penguin.
I hope that makes some sense but I have to stop here as I have to be at work in half an hour.
2 comments:
how can something be slightly off centre YET edging towards post-modern. I thought if something's edging towards post-modern it would have to be slightly off centre... you forgot to mention that the title is cool.
Sounds interesting. I'll keep an eye out for Dave Eggers next time I'm in a library/ book store. I've never really read many short stories, I generally prefer longer narratives with a lot more back story and subplots. That said, I'm prepared to try something new.
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