Loosely based on Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, Eggers’ novel follows the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can’t control. His father is gone, his mother is spending time with a younger boyfriend, and his sister is becoming a teenager. At the same time, he finds himself capable of startling acts of wildness: he wears a wolf suit and he bites his mom. During a fight at home, Max flees and runs away into the woods. He finds a boat there, jumps in, and ends up on the open sea, destination unknown. He lands on the island of the Wild Things, and soon he becomes their king. But things get complicated when Max realizes that the Wild Things want as much from him as he wants from them.
eMusic Review 0
10.16.09
Dave Eggers, The Wild Things
2009 | Label: Blackstone Audiobooks
Eggers updates the monsters from Sendak's classic, and in this telling they sound more than a little like us
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.