How We Are Hungry is a gripping, lyrical, and always intensely soulful group of stories written over the past four years. Though they range from a doomed Irish setter's tales of running and jumping ("After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned") to a bitterly comic meditation on suicide and friendship ("Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance"), the stories share a haunting and haunted sense of mortality. Though full of bursts of levity and humor, the book is deeply informed by the troubled times in which it was written. How We Are Hungry includes many never-before-published stories, along with a number of pieces that first appeared in magazines, both well known (Zoetrope, The New Yorker) and small and independent (h2s04, Ninth Letter). All previously published stories have been significantly revised. The urgency and experimentalism of Eggers's earlier work are still present, but are brought to a new level of precision and craft, injecting fresh life into traditional forms. Narratives are often linear, told by distinct and varied voices, and settings stretch from Egypt to Interstate 5.
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
From Bookmarks Magazine
In this collection, Eggers (Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) is obviously straddling the line between being a writer—and a very talented one at that—and being the spokesman for the new age of self-conscious writing. Reviewers are unanimously unhappy with a few of his literary pranks here. "There Are Some Things He Should Keep to Himself," for example, offers up five blank pages. But when Eggers throws off our expectations and starts writing, he shines. His longer stories are original, witty, and truthful. As his characters search for transcendence, Eggers and his readers are right there with them.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
In his first collection of short stories, Eggers shows himself to be, well, serious. Gone is the charming, smirky, self-conscious narrative voice that helped make A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (1999) so popular. Aside from the story "There Are Some Things He Should Keep to Himself," which consists of five blank pages, these short stories are unrelentingly sincere--sometimes too much so. Many of these stories feature Americans abroad--a man alone in Egypt, a woman (also alone) in Tanzania preparing to climb Kilimanjaro. In the collection's best story, "The Only Meaning of Oil-Wet Water," two old friends reunite in Costa Rica for a kind of loveless love affair. The accumulation of details--surfing together in the oil-wet water, an injured anteater in their hotel room--brings the story a haunting power. But some of the stories don't come together as well, and Eggers' fans may be disappointed that almost none crack a smile. Still, Eggers imagines emotionally and symbolically resonant scenes as well as any of his contemporaries, and this collection has several great ones. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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More About the Author
Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books, including "Zeitoun," a nonfiction account a Syrian-American immigrant and his extraordinary experience during Hurricane Katrina and "What Is the What," a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. That book, about Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of the civil war in southern Sudan, gave birth to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, run by Mr. Deng and dedicated to building secondary schools in southern Sudan. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco that produces a quarterly journal, a monthly magazine ("The Believer"), and "Wholphin," a quarterly DVD of short films and documentaries. In 2002, with Nínive Calegari he co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco. Local communities have since opened sister 826 centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Ann Arbor, Seattle, and Boston. In 2004, Eggers taught at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and there, with Dr. Lola Vollen, he co-founded Voice of Witness, a series of books using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. A native of Chicago, Eggers graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Left "Hungry",
This review is from: How We Are Hungry (Paperback)
Dave Eggers first caught the world's attention with the semi-autobiographical "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." With the release of "How We Are Hungry," we get to see Eggers in a slightly new light -- these stories possess his usual postmodern skill and pensive intelligence, but lack the gentle humor and wit.
In this collection, Eggers examines various people who try to escape their difficulties, whether climbing mountains or roaming through rural Scotland. These people may be searching for love, for glory, for release, a burst of adrenaline in the desert, or for just a fling by the beach -- however, their problems and pasts will not go away. Eggers does occasionally dip into gimmickry, such as "There Are Some Things He Should Keep to Himself." Don't expect much -- it's a few blank pages, which made me smile. But I feel a little cheated. He's at his best when he's unconsciously quirky, such as a cute conversation between God and the ocean in one short story. Eggers has done well in his past novel and memoir, but some of the themes of "How We Are Hungry" feel worn -- this man has a unique writing talent, but writers have to grow, and this writing doesn't show his mind or soul growing. The themes have not changed, and that lack of movement and growth makes it feel like he's just... stuck. That said, Eggers' writing is genuinely compelling and rich; in his rambly way, he's incredibly eloquent. His descriptions have a raw energy that can take your breath away, such as riding a horse in the desert. At the same time, he can wrap his characters in so much finely-drawn misery that it is difficult to not be moved by them. It's also the one area where Eggers stumbles -- despite the whimsy of the occasional "gimmick" story, the writing is dark and rather depressed. I'm not asking for sunshine and butterflies, but it lacks quips, wit and human insight. Those characters tend to feel like reflections of Eggers himself -- rather world-wear and melancholy. One woman, who climbs a legendary mountain in search of a purpose, is perhaps the richest character -- her inner thoughts are so real that they fly off the page. And she, like all the other characters, is hungry. Not for food, but to fill some emptiness inside that can't be named. Perhaps it's that inner hole that preoccupies Eggers' work, and the endless search is what keeps it from exploring the world. Despite a hint of stagnation, "How We Are Hungry" is a rich and engaging collection of stories. It leaves me wondering where -- if anywhere -- Eggers will go as a writer.
26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great writing, interesting characters, occasional plots,
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This review is from: How We Are Hungry: Stories (Hardcover)
Eggers's first book, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS, was amazing (although I've talked to several people about it and nobody can really remember what the story is about-it's just great style). His second book wasn't as fresh, mostly because the style was no longer new.
This, his third book, a collection of short stories, reads more like a collection of ideas that never grew up to be bigger. Some, only a page or two long, never even made it to short-storyhood. His writing is fantastic, but I felt like, for most of the stories, I was reading about him or someone he knows. The characters are interesting, but all tend to act and sound the same. His stories have a bit of desperate sadness to them, but they never really go anywhere. Sometimes this is nice. Other times it would be nice to go somewhere with these interesting people. I was a little disappointed that my favorite story in the book is one I read years ago in a short story anthology. It's a great story told from the point of view of a dog. Perhaps I'm being unfair to expect to be blown away by everything Eggar's writes, but there are so many fantastic lines, brilliant descriptions and details laced throughout his stories that I want the stories themselves to be as good.
31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Staggering genius.,
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This review is from: How We Are Hungry: Stories (Hardcover)
Dave Eggers has always been too clever by half, and often that resulted in prose getting in the way of plot. Short stories, therefore, are the perfect medium for him, as he can dazzle with words without being bound to develop characters or advance a story (although the few longer stories in the book are surprisingly good). There's not a dud in the book; I'd love to see him publish another volume.
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