Y.S.K.O.V. was a great read with a really interesting premise. Will and Hand are two best friends who lost their other best friend recently in a car crash. Will got a lot of money for some ad recently, but he has been too depressed to appreciate it, so he decides to travel around the world giving out all the money, $40,000 to the poor. The problem is that they only have one week to do it. There are elaborate plans of trips to Siberia, Greenland, Madagascar, Cairo and many other places, all in one week.
The plan is based on speed, and quickness of action, but realistically it cannot work. There are not flights going at all hours of the day to each of those remote places. Most flights need to go through the hub at London, which is time they are not willing to waste. Will and Hand go to Senegal, then up to Morocco, then a little bit in Eastern Europe. They have hopes of bribing someone to let them up on Cheops in Cairo for a sunrise, but that plan falls through too. Then there is the problem of who to give the money to. Will finds many reasons not to give the money to certain people, always thinking there is something better around the corner.
There are tensions between Will and Hand. Hand is all about action and doing things without thinking. Will, the narrator, is stuck inside his head. He is hung up on their friend Jack's death, as well as a recent beating he received from some strangers in Chicago, that he blamed on Hand. Will's Mom, who he talks to on the phone throughout the trip, serves as a voice of reason to his wild plans. In the end, they give most of the money away through crazy schemes, such as reverse haggling, cart leaping, basketball, and pirate treasure hunts in Latvia.
I love Eggers' storytelling. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is one of my all time favorites. Keith is the Keith comes from the book What is the What, which I read recently. I especially loved the story at the end about the natives from Patagonia who moved around trying to fly and suck in all the air that they can. They ran and leaped, and thinking they were the fastest on Earth, left a message for the invading Spaniards: "You shall know our velocity!"
Sometimes we are stuck in Will's head too much, and there is too much repetition of his sorrow and depression. And sometimes the book moves too slow, but maybe that is what Eggers was trying to do, convey the frustration that Will and Hand must have felt at not being able to move as quickly as they wanted to.
Four out of five stars.
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