May 29, 2023 | Rome, Italy

How We Are Hungry

By |2018-03-21T18:28:27+01:00February 1st, 2006|Recent Reviews|

By Dave Eggers

Vintage, 2005. 218 pages.

H

ow?

Hungry for life. In whatever form or transformation we find or devise.

So this collection scouts format possibilities: tall story; real-time account; folklore’s animal tale; flash fiction. In “Another,” the opening fable, a stranger in Egypt pairs to the horseman of death. A mad ride across the desert, then another and… Because these character-driven stories focus fast, relentless search for those salvaged moments which convince us, against all evidence to the contrary, that we are completely alive. Egger’s protagonists evade death and death-in-life.

With mortality a constant lurking antagonist, the writer rescues characters and readers from dead-end tradition. Prose follows suit as he murders cliché and unravels stock imagery, re-viewing and reviving what standard lit passes for experience. This is another Eggers book: eye fresh; mind wide open.

About the Author:

Former Rabelais scholar Patricia Fogarty honed her skills in the New York City publishing world. She lives in Rome and has been the magazine's book columnist for a decade.