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Books in the Media: The Every by Dave Eggers hits the spot
The Every by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton) took the media by storm this week picking up mentions in the Guardian, Telegraph, Sunday Times, Times, iNews and Scotsman.
It was named book of the day twice at the Guardian with Sara Collins saying: “Eggers is a gifted writer who couldn’t write a bad novel; even if this isn’t a great one, it contains several funny sequences threaded together with skewer-sharp sentences.” Rob Doyle said: “The Every is unabashedly partisan and polemical. Eggers’s adversary is the war on subjectivity, nuance and wildness being waged by the clever yet mediocre men and women who wield more power than any government in history.”
Dave Eggers was also interviewed by the Guardian’s Sam Leith earlier this month.
Peter Carty at iNews said commended Eggers for doing “us a service in underlining the sinister directions tech is taking.”
The Scotsman’s Stuart Kelly discussed the relatability of Eggers latest novel: “You read it and think: yes, this is set in the future but it is actually going on here and now. It is an urgent and necessary book. It’s also fun.”
The Times’ Phil Baker said: “The Every occasionally feels overlong, but it scores as a series of brilliant set pieces and a devastating overall critique. It should become a rallying point against what Eggers calls “species altering” technology, threatening to abolish the free human.”
The Telegraph’s Christian Lorentzen criticised the book saying: “The Every is a better book than Eggers’s previous two novels—the turgid Trump satire The Captain and the Glory and his morality play of international development The Parade, both from 2019—but it is still bloated, banal, and only rarely funny.”
The Sunday Times’ Dominic Maxwell said: “What Eggers does so well is make The Every alluring as well as alarming.
In non-fiction, Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, edited by Anna von Planta, picked up mentions in the Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Evening Standard and New York Times.
The collection was book of the week at the Times’ as Mark Sanderson applauded von Planta on pulling the book together saying: “She has done a superb job, creating a clear storyline through the mental and physical chaos of an often 'disgustingly befuddled' (the words are Highsmith’s) writer’s life.”
The book made its way into the New York Times “Nine New Books We Recommend This Week” article this week. As critic Dwight Garner said “The whole book is excellent. Highsmith is pointed and dry about herself and everything else. But the early chapters are special. They comprise one of the most observant and ecstatic accounts I’ve read — and it’s a crowded field! — about being young and alive in New York City.”
It was named Observer book of the week with Peter Conrad saying: “Highsmith regarded writing, liquor and sex as her addictive vices, and like a true decadent she valued sickness as an aesthetic boon.”
At the Evening Standard, Ian Thomson said: “Patricia Highsmith: Diaries and Notebooks opens a window onto this extraordinary writer’s inner life and working methods.”
Finally, the Sunday Times and the Guardian ran extracts from the book.
