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- Edition:
- Unabridged (Blackstone Audiobooks)
- Length:
- 6 hours, 18 minutes
- File Size:
- 173 MB (5 files)
- Published:
- October 2009
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Review by Jess Sauer, eMusic
Whether hungry for brains or cookies, monsters have always worn their cravings on their sleeves. What makes a monster most grotesque is often not what is strange or inhuman about it, but rather what is recognizably human: its exaggerated appetites. These appetites tend toward the literal: Monsters are covetous, hungry, or violent in ways that point to humans' own envy, greed, and wrath. They are humans inside-out, with all our hidden hungers on display. Monsters are mirrors, caricatures, critiques.
The beasts in Dave Eggers' The Wild Things — based on Maurice Sendak's children's classic Where the Wild Things Are — bear all the classic markings of monsterdom. They are gigantic, smelly, and believe that the best way to solve a problem is to eat it. When Max, whose hyperactive antics have alienated him from his family, lands on the shores of their island, the beasts believe he can satisfy a deeper need than basic hunger. They are lonely and convinced that a king, one better than those they've been forced to eat, can fix it. Newly crowned, Max struggles to protect his subjects from their own brains' bogeymen which they call "the void," a feeling of emptiness, and "the chatter," sounds underground that make them feel bad about themselves. The beasts' monstrous craving for relief from loneliness, depression, and self-hatred — and their insistence that it can be found externally — is a moving reflection of human need.
Quotes from the Critics
"THE WILD THINGS is easily the best book ever adapted from a movie that was adapted from a picture book--but it also succeeds in its own right. Dave Eggers has written a novel that is deeply imaginative, slightly strange, occasionally dark, and ultimately touching." - USA Today
"The real question, when it comes to literature, is whether a particular author is interested in hustling us through a breakneck plot...investigating the internal lives of his or her creations. The best books - and I happily include THE WILD THINGS on this list - manage to do both....Eggers has written a book for readers of all ages, without dumbing down his prose. But his highest achievement is in having found a fresh way to tell us a story we already know so well, about the monstrous forces of love and hate that mark every childhood--and pursue us howling into adulthood." - Boston Globe
"[W]here Sendak created a poetic blend of words and pictures to depict typical childhood impulses, fears and desires, Eggers has crimped these universals, reducing them to the upswellings of confusion and rage felt by an 8- or 9-year-old after his parents' divorce.....[but o]nce on monster island, the book grows more charming and witty.....THE WILD THINGS is intermittently amusing but far more conventional than it should be. Eight- to 12-year-olds will like the book, but older readers -- those 'children of all ages' -- won't be starting a wild rumpus over it." - Washington Post
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