The parade A novel

Review by New York Times Review

THE PARADE, by Dave Eggers. (Knopf, $25.95.) In Eggers's tense parable of a novel, his eighth, two men known by numbers instead of names are contracted by a road-building company to lay down a highway in a war-torn foreign country in time for a government parade. "Without the usual biographical hints tucked into conversations and internal thoughts, Eggers differentiates between Four and Nine solely through their reactions to the post-civil-war devastation around them," Idra Novey writes in her review. "How this setup reduces the two men to their willingness - or refusal - to see others is striking."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 14, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

Four knows instantly that Nine, his new partner, is an agent of chaos. The two strangers with their terse pseudonyms have been hired to pave a new road connecting the north and south of a poor, civil-war-ravaged country. The protocols are strict; the schedule is tight they are to complete the road in time for a celebratory parade and the dangers are many. Four pilots the grand RS-90, which lays down perfect asphalt; Nine rides ahead, scouting for obstacles. They are to set up tents next to their vehicles at night, keep their weapons handy, eat rations, and avoid contact with locals. Four is monastic in his discipline. Nine is a man of frank carnality and curiosity, as friendly as a bounding dog and utterly reckless. Clearly things will go awry, but how and how badly? The ever-incisive, wordly-wise, compassionate, and imaginative Eggers (The Monk of Mokha, 2018) maintains the tension of a cocked crossbow in this magnetizing, stealthily wry, and increasingly chilling tale of First World corporate mercenaries way out of their element. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Requests will pour in from Eggers' many fans as well as devotees of concentrated and suspenseful works of culture-clash fiction.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Eggers's unremarkable latest (after The Monk of Mokha) follows two unnamed men sent to an unnamed country by an unnamed corporation to pave a road. The country-tropical, malarial-is emerging from years of civil war, and a new road running through the heart of the country is intended to be a first step by the government to unite the populace. The men charged with paving it are code-named Four and Nine. Four is a stoic company man intent on getting the job done ahead of schedule and with as little fuss as possible. Nine exists seemingly only to annoy Four; he talks incessantly, has no problem breaking company protocol-particularly when it comes to interacting with locals, which the company prohibits but he engages in endlessly-and does pretty much anything other than his job, including playing in a potentially contaminated river. As Four gets to work, Nine becomes increasingly irresponsible, and after his antics predictably get him ill and in trouble with the locals, both men end up in a precarious, possibly grave, situation. The repetitive narrative, sparse prose, and overall vagueness lend this an allegorical feel, and because the reader spends the whole book waiting for the hammer to drop, when it finally does (on the last page), it lands with more a thud than a wallop. There's nothing particularly bad about this, but it comes across as more an exercise than a full-blooded novel. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A plan to lay down a roadway runs into a few barriers in this parable of friendship and politics.The pared-down style and global themes that Eggers has embraced since A Hologram for the King (2012)he may be the only living American writer for whom the term "Hemingway-esque" meaningfully applieshave restricted him to writing two kinds of novels. Eggers the Compassionate Realist focuses on men and women forced to adapt to economic shifting sands (Hologram; Heroes of the Frontier, 2016); Eggers the Dour Lecturer focuses on social justice concerns in ways that smother his characters (The Circle, 2013). This short novel showcases the virtues of the former, though there's a whiff of pedagogy in the prose. Two men, Four and Nine, have been assigned to pave a road in an unnamed country recovering from civil war. Four is an experienced, by-the-book type, concerned only with meeting his deadline before a celebratory parade. Nine is a reckless newbie, neglecting cautions against eating local food, swimming in a local river, and carousing. Eggers doesn't play this for comedy, Odd Couple-style, not even a little; we're mostly in Four's increasingly infuriated mind, and we know that the country is unstable enough that Nine's antics court serious consequences. But when it does, Eggers ably weaves in a host of ethical questions over one man's responsibility to the other, what makes help transactional versus simply kind, and whether the road itself will truly "bring safety and progress to the provinces at seventy miles an hour." The closing paragraphs of this short novel take an abrupt turn into Dour Lecturer territory, but the shift is earned; Eggers is determined to counter the notion that social and economic improvement work hand in hand, and Four and Nine ultimately resonate as characters as much as archetypes.An unassuming but deceptively complex morality play, as Eggers distills his ongoing concerns into ever tighter prose. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One In the morning's platinum light he raised his leaden head. He was lying on a plastic mattress, in a converted shipping container, below a tiny fan that circulated the  room's tepid air. He washed himself with packaged towelettes and put on his uniform, a black jumpsuit of synthetic fiber. Under a quickly rising sun he walked across the hotel's gravel courtyard to his partner's room. They had never met. He knocked on the corrugated steel door. There was no answer. He knocked louder. After some shuffling from within, a lithesome man answered, naked but for a pair of white boxers. He had dark eyes, a cleft chin and a wide mouth ringed with full, womanly lips. A swirl of black hair rakishly obscured his left eye. "Pick a number." "Nine," the man at the door said, smiling slyly. "Okay. You know how the company handles names. I don't know yours, you don't know mine. For the next two weeks, you're Nine. Call me Four." "You're Four?" "You will call me Four. I'll call you Nine. Got it?" For reasons of security, the company insisted on simple pseudonyms, usually numerical. "Got it," Nine said, and swept his hair from his face and threw it back. They had arrived without passports. Passports were complications and liabilities in such a place, a nation recovering from years of civil war, riddled with corruption and burdened now by a new and lawless government. Four and Nine had been flown in under assumed names on a private charter. In the past, in other nations, the company's employees had been ransomed and killed. The kidnappers went first for their quarry's company, then family, then nation. But without passports or names, men like Four and Nine were anonymous and of little value. Their machine, the RS-80, was almost impossible to trace. It bore no company name, no serial number and had no national registry. No one but their clients, the north­ern government in the capital, would know anything about them, their origins or employer. "You ready to eat?" Four asked. "We have forty minutes till we begin. The crew is making a final check on the machine." "Soon," Nine said, a smile overtaking his expansive mouth. Nine stepped out of the doorway and tilted his head toward the bed behind him. Beyond Nine's naked torso Four could see the fur­rowed sheets of an unmade bed, and woven within them the muscular legs of a sleeping woman. Nine made no effort to hide her. Instead he smiled conspiratorially. Four had never met this man, and did not think himself capable of prophecy, but in an instant he knew Nine was an agent of chaos and would make the difficult work ahead far more so. Now Nine yawned. "Can I meet you in a few minutes?"   Four closed the door and made his way across the courtyard, now baking in the day's young heat, to the cafeteria. The room was humid with men bent over their food--men in suits, men in faded military uniforms, men in traditional dress. All spoke in low voices over the clacking of cheap tin silverware on plastic plates. There were only a few foreigners in the makeshift din­ing hall attached to this new hotel, comprising two dozen shipping containers arranged in an untidy semicircle. After waiting half an hour in the breakfast room, Four went to Nine's room again and knocked on the door. "Coming!" Nine yelled, and the room burst with laughter. Four returned to the cafeteria and drank bottled water. Ten minutes later Nine entered the room, having showered and dressed in his company-issued black jump­suit. He had, though, declined to insert himself into the suit's upper half. He wore a white V-neck undershirt, the jumpsuit's sleeves dangling limply by his side, petting the other men's shoulders as he slipped around the tables on his way to Four. "I didn't expect you here today," Nine said. "The planes in these parts aren't so punctual. That's why I had company last night. You married?" "No," Four lied. "You're not eating?" Nine asked. "I already ate," Four said. In his room, he had finished a packet of dry oatmeal and powdered milk, a bag of almonds and a length of venison jerky--all of which he had brought with him. He had packed enough food for the twelve days the job was expected to take. "You ate in your room ?" Nine said, offended. "You can't do that. The food here's so good. Well, it's not so good, but it's intriguing. " His hair had fallen over his left eye and he flung it back with a flourish of his hand. "I'll get to it," Nine said, and went to the buffet and chose half a grapefruit, a tall glass of mango juice, three boiled eggs and a few shards of animal bone covered in purple meat. On his way back to the table, Nine's lifeless sleeves again flailed amid the other diners. Four looked around the room to see if any of the local men, a mix of former rebel commanders and recent profiteers, had taken an interest in Four or Nine. None had. He and his new partner were obviously foreigners in a place where most visitors were aid workers and arms inspectors, and it was better if they remained unmemorable. Nine set his plate down and allowed his hair to fall from his forehead like the tendrils of a willow. Eschewing the tin utensils, Nine used his fingers to bring the gamey bones to his mouth for gnawing and washed the meat down with sun-colored juice. The company had advised against eating regional fruit in whole or liquid form, and strongly suggested that eggs or meat could contain E. coli, salmonella or ringworm. But Nine was devouring it all with abandon, his greasy hair groping his plate obscenely. Four could not discern what the company saw in this man. He was a liability. "You know what she cost?" Nine asked, his mouth full. He did not wait for Four to answer. "Less than what we're paying for breakfast. And she was fresher than this," he said, jabbing his fork at the wet grapefruit before him. "The machine's waiting," Four said. "The first pod is in place. How long until you're ready?" Nine looked at him, grinning. "Now I know why they call you the Clock." Four stood. "Be ready in ten minutes," he said. "You're not serious. I just got in yesterday," Nine said. "The schedule's padded. This is a great town. Let's spend a day here. Another night, more importantly." He raised an eyebrow lewdly. "I'll loan you my girl." Four pushed in his chair. "I'll meet you out front in ten minutes. Bring all your gear."   Excerpted from The Parade: A Novel by Dave Eggers All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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