Review: The Parade

The Parade by Dave Eggers
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free ecopy from Penguin First to Read in exchange for an honest review.

I've heard some good things about Eggers' other books, so when I had an opportunity to read The Parade I figured I would give it a shot. It did not work for me one bit. This is a story about a couple of men that are employed by an unspecified company to go to an unnamed country to build a road using some advanced technology. The point is to connect two cities that have been ravaged by war in an attempt to foster peace and prosperity.

I am drawn to books with really well written characters. These guys are pretty bland. They don't even have names, instead going by numbers of their own choosing. That aspect didn't bother me too much until a couple instances late in the story. But they lack personality. It seemed like Eggers took the Odd Couple trope and transplanted them into a post military conflict zone with no oversight. Four is a veteran of this sort of thing. He is focused on the job at hand and tunes out everything else. Nine is extremely flighty, indulging every whim he has along the way. The way the story is set up I could buy that these two guys would be in this particular place to do this job without a larger group. However, the interactions between the characters felt ridiculous without any humor.

Personally, the whole thing felt pretty vague. I think most of this comes down to the writing style. We see all of the events from Four's perspective, so his thoughts and opinions color a lot of what we are shown. I wouldn't recommend this as a place to start reading Eggers' works.

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