Eggers’ first novel, published in 2002, is an ambitious literary road trip (with a few airplanes mixed in). Two young Chicagoans, Will and Hand, hatch a plan to travel around the world within seven days, giving away Will’s mini-fortune of $32,000 along the way.
Why the trip? Why the cash giveaways? The answers are elusive until an explanatory story within the story near the end of the book. Before that, one-day flirtations with Senegal, Morocco and two Baltic countries provide character studies of two young American males dealing with loss at the turn of the century. Eggers keeps the quest fresh with honest internal monologue and enough humor to lighten the underlying sorrow. By the end of the tale, however, there’s a sense that maybe you’ve been reading too much of a good thing. The tones and encounters feel repetitive. Reviewed on April 28, 2022