Who am I to contradict the esteemed panel (whoever they are) who select finalists for the National Book Award (whatever that is)? If that award is supposed to recognize the greatest work of literary fiction published in a particular year, I have a hard time believing that this was among the best books published in 2012. Now that I have once again revealed my ignorance and apparent lack of quality literary tastes, I will speak a bit about the book itself.
Dave Eggers, whom I previously knew as the author of What is the What? and a screenplay writer of the curiously distorted movie version of Where the Wild Things Are, explores the life of a washed up, late career, middle aged businessman. Alan Clay spent most of his career with Schwinn, way behind the globalization curve, and now finds himself trying to get the contract to provide internet service at a new economic development in the Saudi desert. The king is supposed to come, sometime, to hear his team's presentation, which includes a demonstration of their holographic teleconferencing tool.
So if you think a book about a salesman spending a few weeks in Saudi Arabia waiting for an audience with the king, biding his time with his much younger coworkers, hooking up with lonely ex-pats, and buddying around with a local driver sounds good, more power to you. It's not as if Eggers is a poor writer, it's just that this series of well-written sentences and occasional insightful vignettes never really congeals into a story worth telling or reading.
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