E-Book Overview
Max is a rambunctious eight-year-old whose world is changing around him: His father is absent, his mother is increasingly distracted, and his teenage sister has outgrown him. Sad and angry, Max dons his wolf suit and makes terrible, ruinous mischief, flooding his sister’s room and driving his mother half-crazy. Convinced his family doesn’t want him anymore, Max flees home, finds a boat and sails away. Arriving on an island, he meets strange and giant creatures who rage and break things, who trample and scream. These beasts do everything Max feels inside, and so, Max appoints himself their king. Here, on a magnificent adventure with these funny and complex monsters, Max can be the wildest thing of all. In this visionary adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic work, Dave Eggers brings an imaginary world vividly to life, telling the story of a lonely boy navigating the emotional journey away from boyhood.
E-Book Content
For Maurice Sendak, an unspeakably brave and beautiful man CHAPTER I Matching Stumpy pant for pant, Max chased his cloud-white dog through the upstairs hallway, down the wooden stairs, and into the cold open foyer. Max and Stumpy did this often, running and wrestling through the house, though Max's mother and sister, the two other occupants of the home, didn't appreciate the volume and violence of the game. Max's dad lived in the city and phoned on Wednesdays and Sundays but sometimes did not. Max lunged toward Stumpy, missed, barreled into the front door, and knocked the doorknob-basket off. The doorknob-basket was a small wicker vessel that Max thought was stupid but Max's mom insisted on having on the front doorknob for good luck. The main thing the basket was good for was getting knocked off, and landing on the floor, where it was often stepped on. So Max knocked the basket off, and then Stumpy stepped on it, putting his foot through the bottom with an unfortunate wicker-ripping sound. Max was worried for a second, but then his worry was eclipsed by the sight of Stumpy trying to walk around the house with a basket stuck to his foot. Max laughed and laughed. Any reasonable person would see the humor in it. "Are you going to be a freak all day?" Claire asked, suddenly standing over Max. "You've only been home for ten minutes." His sister Claire was fourteen, almost fifteen, and was no longer interested in Max, not on a consistent basis at least. Claire was a freshman now and the things they always liked to do together -- including Wolf and Master, a game Max still thought worthy -- were no longer so appealing to her. She had adopted a tone of perpetual dissatisfaction and annoyance with everything Max did, and with most things that existed in the world. Max didn't answer Claire's question; any response would be problematic. If he said "No," then it would imply he had been acting freakish, and if he said "Yes," it would mean that not only had he been a freak, and he was admitting it, but that he intended to continue being a freak. "You better make yourself scarce," Claire said, repeating one of their dad's favorite expressions. "I'm having people over." If Claire had been thinking clearly, she would have known that to tell Max to become scarce would only make him want to be more prominent, and to tell him that she was having people over would only make him more committed to being present. "Is Meika coming?" he asked. Meika was his favorite among Claire's friends, the rest of whom were imbeciles. Meika paid attention to him, actually talked to him, asked him questions, had one time even come into his room to play Legos and admire the wolf suit he kept on his closet door. She had not forgotten what was fun. "None of your business," Claire said. "Just leave us alone, okay? Don't ask them to play with your blocks or whatever lame crap you want them to do." Max knew that watching and annoying Claire and