Name: A hologram for the king
ISBN: 9781936365746

Dave Eggers

"In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great"--Publisher.

a novel

A hologram for the king

Taylor

I really wish I had something insightful to say about this book. This is my second Eggers novel after "Your Fathers...", so I'm not professing to be a fan or particularly prolific reader of his work. But what I got from "Your Fathers..." and this novel is that Dave Eggers really likes dialogue, and he writes a ton of it. You get used to short, efficient sentences with little description, and when you encounter a descriptive paragraph over five lines you get a little shock like you're remembering: oh, right, English still has adjectives. Maybe that's a bit harsh. This really isn't a critical review; I guess it's a confused one. "Hologram" tackles a lot in its 300 pages, but I'm not sure how successful it is in actually addressing the issues it brings up. I knew the ending about 50 pages in, and it didn't really discuss anything new or resolve anything. My next planned Eggers read is "Heartbreaking"; maybe that will change my mind on this book in retrospect. On first read, though, I was extremely underwhelmed.

Trever

This book starts out promisingly, but at the climax and beyond, the plot falls apart and looses all intrigue.

Patty Pforte

A really enjoyable book! I read it quickly and really rooted for the main character! I love Dave Eggers writing so I was already hooked by the first few pages!

Melanie Richards

** spoiler alert **
           A good chunk of this book was a bit labored, but when Eggers finally gets around to developing Alan's character, it's not hard to feel for Alan. He's a bit of a Peter Keating: a man stuck in the ways of his peers, easy to pity, shamefully easy to identify with. Alan Clay is all the quiet ways in which the lucky fail, disappoint.

If you're looking for a solution, a neat sweeping-away of all the uneasiness the story engenders, you won't find it. Eggers provides a pretty existentialist ending (comparisons to Waiting for Godot are dead-on) that leaves the story as open as it began. Hey, sounds like life.

ANDREW BRYK

Love dave eggers but thought this wasnt his best

A National Book Award Finalist, a New York Times bestseller and one of the most highly-acclaimed books of the year, A Hologram for the King is a sprawling novel about the decline of American industry from one of the most important, socially-aware novelists of our time. In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman named Alan Clay pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment--and a moving story of how we got here.

A Hologram for the King

Kirsten Maliepaard

A struggling American businessman travels to a rising Saudi Arabian city with the hopes of securing a contract that will earn him a commission large enough to stave off his economic woes and hold his family together.

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Kate Sigrist

Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Tom Hanks, Tom Skerritt, and Sarita Choudhury. In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman named Alan Clay pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment--and a moving story of how we got here.

A hologram for the king a novel