Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

April 28, 2014
Composed entirely of dialogue, the latest from Eggers (The Circle) is more tedious deposition than gripping drama. The novel is set on an abandoned military base along the Pacific coast, where Thomas, a troubled man, is interrogating a diverse group of chained captives. Frustrated by his lack of purpose and in search of answers about injustices large and small, Thomas kidnaps Kev, a driven astronaut who represents "the one fulfilled promise" he's ever known. This first interview inspires Thomas to seek out further captives: an ex-congressman, a policeman, a disgraced schoolteacher, his own mother and others. Depending on the prisoner, Thomas is respectful or abusive, solicitous or prosecutorial, but he never wavers in his view of himself as a "moral" and "principled man." He is outraged at the abuses, shortsightedness, and skewed priorities of the government and its institutions, yet yearns for that government to provide him with some defining role or plan: "Don't we deserve grand human projects that give us meaning?" As for the captives, they generally respond to their unhinged interrogator with sententious or stilted speechifying: "Thomas, you want to attribute your behavior to a set of external factors." There are flashes of sardonic humor and revelations about the triggering event behind the kidnappings, but by then readers will feel as if they themselves have been detained far too long. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

May 15, 2014
A man takes a bunch of hostages for the sake of some robust, moderately unhinged conversation about ethics in Eggers' latest big-issue novel.With A Hologram for the King (2012), Eggers began diligently feeling his way toward a form for a moral novel that would address 21st-century economics and politics. The results have been hit or miss: Hologram was an impressive Hemingway-esque study of the alienation that rapid high-tech expansion sows, while The Circle (2013) was a sodden and didactic jeremiad about social media's capacity to chisel away at our privacy. His new novel is similarly message-laden but, since it's brief and told exclusively in dialogue, doesn't wear out its welcome. Thomas, the novel's antihero, has kidnapped a number of people and shackled them in separate buildings on a decommissioned California Army base; among them are an astronaut he knew in college, a Vietnam-vet congressman, a grade school teacher, his mother and a police officer. Thomas is clearly unstable, but the discussions that spill out address legitimate real-world concerns. Why are governments more adept at financing war than education? Where is the line between inappropriate and criminal behavior, and who decides? How much of our capacity to navigate the world is predetermined, and how much of it is a function of experience? The deliberately unrealistic structure carries the faint echo of Plato's dialogues, though Eggers is careful to keep the tone relatively casual. (Like many fictional madmen, Thomas is frightening, but he holds your attention.) Over the course of the handful of days the novel covers, Thomas becomes more delusional, but also more revealing of a critical incident in this life, which gives the closing pages some needed drama while raising questions about the appropriate relationship between authority and compassion.Eggers turns this novel's contrivances into an asset, though overall it feels more like a series of philosophy-symposium prompts than a full-fledged story.

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June 15, 2014

Thomas is mad as hell. Life isn't going according to his grand plan, his government has made some bad decisions, and the folks he needs to talk with won't respond. Thomas has never hurt anyone--in fact, he considers himself a principled man--but he's so angry and his head hurts, and he just wants someone to share his umbrage. Using a trick he picked up from a TV cop show, Thomas begins his search for the truth by chloroforming and kidnapping Kevin, a NASA astronaut and former instructor. His destination is Fort Ord, an abandoned army base in California, and an ideal location for holding prisoners. Interviewing his captives about war, police brutality, and pedophilia, Thomas reveals the layers of his troubled soul. Like the biblical prophets of the title, he hopes to elicit repentance from those who have committed grave wrongs. VERDICT A quick read, part psychological thriller, part political screed, this novel poses important questions but offers frustratingly few answers. Eggers was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award (What Is the What) and the National Book Award (A Hologram for the King). Though this slight novel falls short in comparison, fans will still be asking about it. [See Prepub Alert, 4/14/14.]--Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

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July 1, 2014
If Eggers' last novel, The Circle (2013), was a symphony, this one's a jazz sessiona brief, single helping of strangeness that flaunts his panache for stylistic experimentation. The book is pure dialogue, with zero description or exposition. A disturbed young man named Thomas kidnaps an astronaut and chains him to a post in an abandoned military base on the California coast. Thomas begins a series of interrogations; pines for the days of the Apollo space program, when people had something to believe in; and feels abandoned by a country he no longer understands. We just spent five trillion dollars on useless wars. That could have gone to the moon. Or Mars, Thomas laments. To say much more about the plot would ruin the book's improvised feel, but eventually helicopters, a retired congressman, and a dog are involved as Thomas demands answers from a universe governed by chaos. The writing is compelling and the characterization astute, though the minimalist story doesn't quite seem sure of what it wants to say.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)