How We Are Hungry (2004)

The 15 stories in Dave Eggers' handsome new collection, How We Are Hungry, range from droll, plotless two-page stunts to long, haunting character-driven narratives. In the clever one-paragraph ''Naveed,'' a young woman frets about sleeping with an attractive man she's brought home because doing so will bring her lifetime total of lovers to a ''baker's dozen'' — which she thinks will surely upset her hypothetical future husband. Eggers is a master of these sharp, silly exercises, but he's capable of much more. In the book's finest, darkest story, ''Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly,'' a woman on the cusp of middle age climbs Mount Kilimanjaro, her moods shifting fluidly from joy to regret, exhaustion, boredom, competitiveness, and, ultimately, horror.