What is the What

When I first heard about Dave Eggers' What is the What, I was certain I would enjoy this book. It has gotten great reviews and the Guardian has an interesting article about Dave Eggers' attempts to write this story. I recently read Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, and thought it was great. Yes, I know that was in Sierra Leone and this is in Sudan, but they are both stories of children in Africa caught up in terrible violence and civil war. What is the What is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee, who was driven from his home when he was a boy, and walked thousands of miles with other children to Ethiopia to escape the violence of his country. After living in a refugee camp for several years, he was finally brought to the U.S. For some reason though, I couldn't seem to get beyond 200 pages (out of 475). I really wanted to like this book. I wanted to be moved by this book. I wanted to be outraged. But for some reason, I wasn't. I hate to say it, but I was a little bored with it. Maybe reading Beah's book steeled me for the terrible things I would read. Maybe it was because at the beginning of the book we know Achak gets out ok, so I wasn't worried for him. Or maybe I was just in a reading funk. Has anyone else had this problem with this book? What are your thoughts?

In any case, I'm going to try They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys From Sudan by Alphonsion Deng. Maybe this one will grab me. Stay tuned.