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Short sharp shocks. With a superb, landscape-altering memoir and a noteworthy, if flawed, novel to his name (as well as editorship of the literary journal McSweeney’s and the creation of the non-profit educational programme 826 Valencia), Dave Eggers now weighs in with a collection of short stories written over the past four years. Perhaps predictably, given Eggers’ combination of huge talent and a predilection for doing 50 things at once, How We Are Hungry freely mixes brilliance and mediocrity. At times these two qualities jostle for supremacy on a line-by-line basis, acute observations stumbling over redundancies in such a manner as to suggest certain stories were written while the author was simultaneously fielding important calls, spinning plates and getting into a wetsuit. Elsewhere, however, the achingly bittersweet meditation on friendship and despair that is Climbing To The Window, Pretending To Dance, and the powerfully resonant, Hemingway-esque Up The Mountain Coming Down Slowly - Eggers’ finest piece of fiction to date - are little less than perfect. How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers, out now published by Hamish Hamilton.
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 useful linkswww.826valencia.org www.826valencia.org/store penguin: how we are hungry
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see also
 future dictionary of america review mcsweeneys 13review  mcsweeneysthrilling tales
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