A book that could have been completely unbearable and, somehow, mostly earns its own obnoxious title.

Part memoir, part performance, part grief-machine with jokes taped to it, it follows Eggers after the death of both parents, as he becomes guardian to his younger brother and tries to build a life out of panic, tenderness, guilt, ambition, money anxiety, and late-90s self-consciousness.

It is very much a book of its moment: metafictional, nervy, digressive, clever to the point of self-sabotage, but also genuinely moving when it stops tap-dancing long enough to bleed. Eggers writes grief as a system of absurd admin and emotional improvisation — childcare, friendship, publishing, sex, fear, trying to become impressive while your life is quietly on fire. A key early-2000s literary artefact, but better than that makes it sound.

Paperback, Picador, 2007 reprint of the 2001 UK paperback edition. Good second-hand condition with light shelf wear and minor cover/page handling. Interior clean.