One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box: Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape, How the Water Feels to the Fishes, and Minor Robberies

by Dave Eggers, Sarah Manguso, Deb Olin Unferth

In the grand tradition of Neapolitan ice cream, ZZ Top, and Cerberus, the tri-headed guardian of Hades, this set combines individual, short fiction collections by three talented practitioners of the short-short form. Manguso’s Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape is a series of crystalline recollections of her childhood misadventures; Eggers’ How the Water Feels to the Fishes brings a deadpan absurdism to the intimacy and vision of his earlier work; and Unferth’s rollicking Minor Robberies unleashes a horde of off-kilter characters and their indelible misadventures. Each author’s work comes in its own hardcover, foil-stamped volume, and the three volumes are housed in an elegant slipcase.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, Graphic Novels, Collections, Poetry, Anthologies

300 pages, Hardcover

First published September 20, 2007

About the author

Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is best known for his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers is also the founder of several notable literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in numerous prestigious publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine.

Reviews

[Joey Dhaumya · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 for Dave Eggers,
3 for Sarah Manguso,
4 for Deb Olin Unferth,

10 FOR THE EXQUISITE ARTWORK ON THE BOX

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are three books in this collection and this is the first installment of what will eventually total three reviews.

"Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape" by Sarah Manguso is a stellar collection of short short fiction. This is my first experience with this type of fiction and it rests somewhere between poetry and short story fiction. Each story is barely a paragraph but packed with content on a level of a good poem. Almost story is ripe for striking up conversation in a high school or college level English class. At times they remind me of those brief experiences in our life that, for some reason, always remain in our memory but not sure why. Most are gems. A great way to scratch the surface of a new genre for any inquisitive reader.

"How the Water Feels to the Fishes" by Dave Eggers is the second collection of the Small Box Trilogy. Eggers continues to demonstrate why he is one of the freshest voices in contemporary literature. These the short short stories/observations included here cover a broad base of topics, but their voice is consistently original and thoughtful. At times, with stories like "No Safe Harbor" or "Good Man", he brings an honest attention to emotion that reminds us of Raymond Carver. But with other stories, like "Alberto", he gives us a glimpse of devilishness. Some are more philosophical. Others more humorous. They are all appetizers. in a way, that are carefully prepared, easily digested, and thoroughly satisfying.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took a professional reviewer's advice and didn't read any one of these three small books of short-short stories straight through. I jumped around, read a few from each as I progressed. Good call, because once I finished the two shorter ones, I was left with "Minor Robberies" by Deb Olin Unferth. The trouble with her book was that I had gotten used to the idea of short-short stories, or flash fiction, or snap fiction, or whatever the form is called. The volumes by Dave Eggers and Sarah Manguso live up to this form (hell, every one of Manguso's stories is maybe 75 - 100 words at the most). Unferth's just seemed like regular short fiction, except that in her filter, making your sentence structure repetitive or sounding like a run-on sentence means it is short-short fiction. Imagine reading a story like that that lasts over ten pages. And since her book was the longest, at the end I was left with only hers and had to read several stories like that in a row. Yet I digress...I only wanted to clarify what happened to earn this just 3 stars. Dave Eggers volume, "How The Water Feels To The Fishes" was pretty funny, and in some cases almost felt like intricately constructed jokes (like the story of finding out how phonographs work - great last line). Sarah Manguso's "Hard To Admit And Harder To Escape" was also interesting and, as I said, are all super short, which gives them an anecdotal feel.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clever idea, nicely executed... up until now I haven't been a fan of Eggers's work, but many of the stories in "How the Water Feels" grabbed me by the throat. I'll be looking to read his stuff from now on... Manguso is more of a poet, and maybe for that reason her pieces show a lot more care with the language. They read really well. Many of them are emotionally effective, and a few are very funny. But some of them seem to just kind of sit there being formal and blurring together... My own view is that Unferth's book is the best of the three. That's not because the other two books are bad at all, but because Unferth's book is so exquisitely, painfully good. She has a voice I've been trying to find for a long time -- complex, awkward, dark, and sort of goofy. Her stories show an amazing range of expression and an almost philosophical grasp of the absurd. If I had to pigeonhole it, I'd say her book strikes the perfect balance between the barbed, challenging work of avant garde figures like Diane Williams or Ben Marcus and the quasi-humorist playfulness of someone like George Saunders. It's an important collection, I think, and I can't wait to read more.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review concerns only Unferth's Minor Robberies:

It is twisted and incompetently brilliant. She is the literary equivalent of a cheeky post punk band--elliptical, experimental, disturbing, anxious, manic, snottily and sincerely casual, falling apart--she whips off tiny snippets. Part of her inimitable voice is her intentional inelegance. Example: ". . . if reincarnation is right . . ." She very much has the tools to say "if the idea of reincarnation holds water," but she doesn't, and it is so much better that way. The formal elements of the punk aesthetic are alive here, if only analogously--she does not actually address or reference the movement at all in content. But the lowness of her language, the wiry tone, the shifting subjunctive style and miniature focus pack the same kind of gut punch, and like the best of those bands, she manages to be both avant garde and entirely guttural. A series of miniatures of the deformed genitals of the human heart, not in the abstract general, but in tiny daily process.

I doubt I'll read the Eggers. Manguso, mayhap.

[Summer · Rating 4 out of 5]

i think it's kind of sad how many people are either like ' oh i only read the dave eggers part ' or ' oh i don't like dave eggers but sarah manguso is awesome ' or whatever. i don't know why i think it's sad. i guess i think it's neat that these authors did this together. and i imagine that they like and are inspired by each other's work. anyway, i liked it all. tiny stories make me happy, most of this book is poetry without line breaks. it makes me feel.

[unnarrator · Rating 4 out of 5]

Explanation of rating:

Sarah Manguso FIVE STARS astonishing OMG I love her.
Dave Eggers THREE STARS for his acknowledgedly tepid homage to Lydia Davis.
Deb Olin Unfirth NO STARS because it was so bad I couldn't even finish it.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection of tiny stories. I didn't find a single one in here that I didn't like. They really seemed to go well together. Each author had their own flavor, but there was a certain unity to the whole thing. I could really see why these were all put together.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

With her permission, I animated Deb Olin Unferth's story "Deb Olin Unferth;" it is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1lRgd...

[David Markwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eggers 3/5
Manguso 5/5
Olin Unferth 4/5

All three volumes were quite enjoyable. Egger's was the weakest of the three, in my opinion, but still had some excellent moments. Both Manguso's & Olin Unferth’s contributions were spectacular. A very fun, funny, and touching collection of extremely short fiction.

[Laala Kashef Alghata · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Still we love and are unloved, still we understand no one, still we and our love die, still reality is hard to admit and harder to escape, still the essential moments are unexpected but nothing is new, still we were wrong about the past but the future is about to begin, still things make sense, still there is but one reliance.” — Sarah Manguso, Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape

This book doesn’t take long to get through. It’s 81 short stories — and by short, I mean short. None are longer than a page. Manguso manages to evoke quite a lot of emotion at times. The above quote, for instance. Or this one. She has a wonderful gift of the short story — in twenty sentences she will manage to impart a nameless character’s entire being. I enjoyed the book less than I thought I would, but that was mainly because I felt like it was bursting with unused talent. Some were remarkable, and others utterly ordinary. I would happily and readily read another book by her, because I could tell that she has much more to offer. I just wish she’d offered it all here.

“Her imagination was easily ignited and the line between fiction and reality, for her, was much too malleable.” — Dave Eggers, How The Water Feels to the Fishes

I love Dave Eggers. I have to start by saying that, because this book actually disappointed me a little. I don’t know what it is, I had the same feeling reading Sarah Manguso’s contribution to One Hundred and Forty-five Stores in a Small Box. With her, I hadn’t read anything else but could see snippets of brilliance in the book. With Dave Eggers, I know how brilliant he is. And there are a few of the shorts that I really loved, and there was a few quotes that I posted, too. For anyone else it would be a great collection, but I expect more from him. I feel like he had more to give, and it disappoints me to see it fall short. That’s not to say this wasn’t a worthwhile read, but it’s hard sometimes to give up expectations for reality.


“All this is fine, she supposes, except she trembles to think of the self coming next, the self she might evolve into despite her protestations.” — Deb Olin Unferth, Minor Robberies

Of the three short story collections in One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box, this is the most successful. While the other two, How The Water Feels to the Fishes and Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape are both strong works by writers I admire or love, the snatches of genius between mundane or just slightly above average writers frustrated me. Knowing they had that kind of talent and didn’t stick it into every single sentence made me want to discount the books altogether. I had almost snapped into my editor mode, wanting to go back to the writers and tell them to get it together and show how remarkable they are.

With Deb Olin Unferth you don’t feel that. I’m not saying every story was a home run, but I didn’t feel she was preforming below her talent (which is considerable). Her writing feels effortless and is beautiful. She deals with such a range of human emotion, especially uncertainty, insecurity and love, with such precision you can’t help but say, yes! YES! At times I felt she wrote like I wish more people would write.

The short of the long is I really enjoyed the collection, and it’s definitely gotten me pumped for Olin’s Vacation, which is already sitting on my shelves.

[Anne Sanow · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading two of the books in this set, I'm bringing my review down to 4 stars [see update below:] because: I'm tired now. A bit weary, that is, of short encapsulated clever witty storybits that are making me feel old-fashioned for not always getting it.

As I noted the first time I posted on this, I loved Sarah Manguso's contribution, Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape: sharp, poetic, witty, and often devastating. She has a really distinctive voice, and taken altogether the collection has cohesion.

Now I've read Deb Olin Unferth's collection (Minor Robberies), and while I liked a lot of them too--actually cracked up out loud, in places--others felt a bit samey, or repetitive, or too much like Lydia Davis ripoffs. I think it's that technique of echoing simple language as a way to form and draw out sentences that started putting me to sleep (e.g., "I said that he'd said/he said I'd said/and then I said/because I said" etc.). She can twist a phrase with a punch in places, though. Probably just better in smaller doses.

***

Last update, now that I've also read Dave Eggers' contribution, How the Water Feels to the Fishes. O.K., so I'm not a huge fan of Eggers' writing generally (that whole clever-boy, less-smart-than-it-thinks-it-is kind of thing), but these weren't bad. It's mixed: some are little more than riddle/conundrums, others momentary navel-gazing, and others seem like the beginning of something rather than some organic whole. He does have the good grace to acknowledge his debt to Lydia Davis, and I suppose that the worst one could say is that he's an assiduous student.

Back up to five stars for the box set overall, though. Why? It's a brilliant concept (and here's where I do admire the work Eggers does), and the books work well together in presenting three writers with different takes on just what a story can be.

[Jennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first book I read was Deb Olin Unferth's Minor Robberies. As with any book of short stories, some are awesome, some are not. Some use language in really impressive ways, and some are so overly wrought they make me cringe. Some pack powerful emotional punches, and some leave me thinking "What was the point of that?" Some blow my mind, and some are way over my head. The ones that stick with me the most are "Deb Olin Unferth" and "To Do," because, shockingly enough, I think like that, or almost like that, or enough like that that reading about it in someone else's story is amusing and almost painful. Overall, though, it was a good book, and an enjoyable reading experience.

The next book, Dave Eggars' How the Water Feels to the Fishes, is so short that it barely qualifies as a book. Teeny tiny little bookling. Some of the stories are really funny, some are brow-furrowing, and some seem fairly pointless. I enjoyed "How to Do It," "The Bounty," "How to Make Him a Good Man by Calling Him a Good Man," and "How the Air Feels to the Birds" the most.

Sarah Manguso's Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape was my least favorite of the books. They are so short, and capture moments so minute and so ordinary, and feature people who are so ordinary and kind of unlikable, that they just sort of seem to blur into insignificance. It's possible they have some kind of deeper meaning or insight or craft that I'm just oblivious to. This happens to me more often that I care to admit. But usually when I'm in this situation, I'm curious--good writing motivates me to learn more and think more, even if it's over my head and I'm not yet capable of understanding it. But this book just left me underwhelmed and bored. I can't even come up with a standout.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to have to break this review into categories.

Overall presentation: Five stars, absolutely. This boxed set of three small hardcover story collections is a pleasure to hold, to touch, to admire. Soft earth tones with a muted pinstripe pattern, gold stamped title, well designed spine.... I just loved reading these books.

Minor Robberies: Four stars. This collection of three to five page stories was quirky, intriguing, emotionally apt, and satisfying. I particularly liked "One She Once Was", "Single Percent", and "Things That Went Wrong Thus Far". The overall work held together in its Kafka-esque tone, its continuously contradictory language, and its mood. Bravo!

How the Water Feels to the Fishes: Three stars. These stories run from one to three pages each, and are more "vignettes" than "stories" in my opinion. Each provides a glimpse of character, a fleeting, worthy-of-examination thought, a small piece of action. I liked "The Commercials of Norway", and "No One Knows" the best. Some pieces were unsettling, some even disturbing. Cleverness and wittiness abound, and the author is well aware of it.

Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape: Two Stars. Each "story" (81 of them!) is less than a page long. All are in the first person. As a whole, they feel whiny, self absorbed, unpleasant. Individually, there are a few sparks of wisdom, a bit of humor, a chunk of wry observation. I did not enjoy reading this one, despite absolutely loving the feel of the book in my hands and marveling at the sheer adorableness of it.

[lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

it seems i am not the only one who only read the deb olin unferth volume -- libraries (rightly, thankfully) catalog these as three separate monographs.

deb olin unferth is really good. these short-short stories are really good, thoughtful, beautiful, spare. i learned that i am perhaps not the biggest fan of this form -- not that i think unferth is limited by it, or that her stories could benefit from expansion, but that my tendency as a reader is to digest books in large chunks. this is never a problem with novels and rarely a problem with short stories but reading strings of short-shorts and flash fiction means that i remember the longer pieces much better, because i guess that's how my brain works. it made me feel like her voice was more static than it actually was, that i was tending towards not liking the next story even though it was most likely wonderful. i am definitely going to seek out her novel.

her style made me think of miranda july and the kevin wilson book i just read, but definitely in terms of deb olin unferth totally mastering something that i think was handled poorly in the other books. this is how you rein in all your clever sentences and quirky characters. additionally, i fully realize that i am an asshole.

i might try to read sarah manguso's contribution, because i like her okay, but frankly dave eggers makes me want to remove my own eyes with hot spoons.

[Frank Dahai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three collections of Flash Fiction, all of them original and inspiring. Egger's 'How The Water Feels To The Fishes' is quite wonderful. I am taking them apart at the moment, looking for the joins, trying to see how it was all done.

Manguso's 'Hard To Admit and Harder To Escape' is a much more unified collection of simple morality tales, all first person, all told in a clearwater kind of voice. Their compact unity is awesome.

A lot of 'Reviewers' (a strange breed) seem to be proud of the fact that they only read Deb Olin Unferth's 'Minor Robberies' collection, or that they only bought the collection for these ones, or that they are only interested in etc... I found them hardest to ingest. They wear their technique on their sleeve to the detriment of the impact. Like Dustin Hoffman, they are good actors, but they are the kind of actor that works 'look at me, I can act' into their plumage.

Recommended as a thorough workout for anyone interested in this kind of thing.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd been trying for a while, in a remarkably half-assed way, to get a copy of this, partly because I was worried that when I did get it it wouldn't be as good as I'd hoped.

And well, I needn't have worried. The Eggers' stories aren't great, but well, no one buys the book for the Eggers' stories. They are the ringers of the bunch, the hook to get you into the other, vastly better books.

I read Manguso's book of Columbus poems or whatever it was, and didn't think so much of it. I liked this one a whole lot better-- I thought the pieces were tight and pretty moving, and all in all a really satisfying little collection.

The star of the Box though is Deb Unferth, whose collection is really pretty awesome. More variety in terms of the kinds of stories she tells than you'd have guessed, and it really works. I thought this was a really impressive piece of work, and well worth the price of the collection as a whole.

[Hans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book and box design - 5 stars! Top notch.

How the Water Feels to the Fishes - Dave Eggers - 4 stars. Most consistent in style (though perhaps a little too safe at times). I enjoyed reading the stories, though they often felt more like sketches for stories rather than finished stories. Best story is the title story.

Minor Robberies - Deb Olin Unferth - 3 stars to 5 stars. Most experimental with diversity in style, story length, and content. Probably also the volume that readers will either love or hate. My suggestion: don't hate the volume, focus on the stories that steal your attention.

Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape - Sarah Manguso - 4.5 stars. Though not every story/scene seems to be about the same person, enough of them could be, that this volume seems to stand as a single work with time shifting forward and backward for the same narrator. I loved #81, the last story in the book.

[Emily]

This little box has provided great subway fodder for the past week. Though Eggers's volume "How the Water Feels to the Fishes" wasn't all that exciting (same old same old), Sarah Manguso's "Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape" is a fine collection of profound little vignettes - tight hunks of writing that I often wanted to read twice. Childhood mixes with artists' colony mixes with the writer's years as a maladjusted art student eager for social acceptance. But the point is that though all these experiences are mixed up in one collection, each moment is clearly, beautiflly expressed. The moments don't necessarily have to add up to anything; the whole is not necessarily the sum of its parts. Nor is the writer necessarily a unified narrative. Plus the books are eminently portable. Excellent for those long F-train-weekend waits.

[Amy Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES!!! Three books, three authors, 145 short stories, endless pleasure. Of course, Dave Eggers' book was my favorite. He has this way of writing that pulls you in, makes you think all these wonderful ideas, then drops you back off in the real world. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. The other two are just as ace!
Deb Olin Unferth's shorty-short stories pack a punch and leave you wanting to find out more about her, her writing, anything you can devour.
You know when you have three things and they're all your favorite and you really love them all, but you have to put them in an order, and when you do that, one of them has to be in the last place? Well, that's where Sarah Manguso's book is. Her stories are a little longer, but they're no less captivating.

[Oriana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, I don't know, gosh. I mean, Dave Eggers and Deb Olin Unferth are two of my most most favorites, and to be sure, some of these stories were terrific. But a lot were just so-so, and I think, like poetry, it's real easy to do a mediocre short-short story, and extremely difficult to do one really well. Plus one by one, in a lit mag or something, I think these stories would have had a lot more punch, but back to back to back I feel like a lot of the tension and sparkle was lost in the muddle.

(And sorry Sarah Manguso, I will try to get to your volume soon, but I am kind of short-short-ed out after the other two.)

[Josh Hornbeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

"One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box" is a fantastic, three-volume collection of short-short stories. Deb Olin Unferth's "Minor Robberies" is a collection of prose poems that perfectly capture the ways we tell stories to each other - full of repetition, uncertainty, and half-remembered incidents. "How the Water Feels to the Fishes," by Dave Eggers, is the most narratively traditional of the three volumes, and contains some of the funniest and most heartbreaking short stories I've read. Finally, Sarah Manguso's "Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape" is comprised of 81 little narratives that add up to tell the story of a broken young woman, desperate for connection.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this tremendously. I read the Sarah Manguso first, because I was most excited about reading more of her work. But then I was sort of too distracted by the event and noting my response to it to know how much I actually liked it. Like wearing a blood pressure gauge the whole time, this tight band on my arm saying: well? well? Complicated. Some of the Dave Eggers stories were so wonderful. And then I loved the Deb Olin Unferth, the one I read last and with the least amount of anticipatory nervousness. And, you know, they're sweet little volumes. I always like that.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best items of note is the truly amazing packaging. Each writer is given their own hardback, while the whole 3 books gets wrapped in a design of love. The biggest surprise of this is the wondrous writing of Dave Eggers. Normally I find much of his work to be good but too wordy. He tends to create forest of words where the true essence gets lost, but not this time. The same excitement you see Dave have about writing and other writers comes out in hi own stories, which I haven't seen for myself until now. Truly a great set.

[Stacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impulse buy! Three little books in a bright and shiny slipcover case. Pretty, pretty. I've been failing in my attempts to write short shorts. Perhaps this will help.

UPDATE: It's a hard title to rate because it's three books. I didn't care much for the Manguso, liked some of the Eggers (but by this point, can't remember much about it), and thought the Unferth was four stars...some of hers are brilliant, brilliant. But it had the opposite effect of what I had initially hoped for. I think I'm going to give up on even trying to write short shorts.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How the Water Feels to the Fishes" by Dave Eggers is a lovely short story collection....and by short story, I mean very short story (most are just 2-3 pages, and some are as short as a line or two). Some I breezed through -- others were written with such compact, poetry-like language that I couldn't help but be sucked in...like in the story "Accident":
"You have done him and his friends some psychic harm, and you jeopardized their health, and now you are so close you feel like you share a heart."

[Nate Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this collection in a record store. Three mini volumes by Sarah Manguso, Deb Olin Unferth and Dave Eggers neatly packed together in an impressive package. It's like buying three already used and very interesting sketchbooks. Further along, you may notice that reading one of these books while on public transport has a tendency to make you feel like you're hanging out with its author. It's the McSweeney's literary equivalent to a pizza night, which incidentally is something their website recommends.

[Anna Kendig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a beautiful boxed set and some really great stories inside each separate collection. I found each author's voice distinct and interesting, even as I wished there was a little more crossover in tone between the three to hold it together. Eggers was my favorite volume, and Deb Olin Unferth's work was also quite interesting and marked by some very profound pieces. The weakest volume in my eyes was Sarah Mangusos's simply because I found many of her stories to feel a little too navel-gazing in subject and repetitive without giving a sense of any overall direction.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because of this book, I'm going to try a little experiment this summer. The idea is that I'll write a short-short story each day for a certain period of time. Maybe I'll start it on my birthday and then go until a month later. Maybe I'll go longer. Maybe I'll start earlier, but probably not tomorrow.

There's also plenty in here to serve as seeds for projects for Creative Writing and/or Sophomore English. One: use your name as the title for a story. Two: Imitate "The New Rules." Three: Various adventures in format. Four: Turn a memory into a story. More: to come, I'm sure.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I realized that I should have read these in the opposite order. I started with Manguso's Hard to Admit..., which turned out to be my favorite. It is very pleasingly off-kilter and disquieting. Unferth's Minor Robberies was next. Similar to Manguso's in tone but more self-conscious. Eggers' How the Water... was just not very good; most of the works felt like entry-level writing class experiments (not that I could do better). If I had started with the Eggers, I could have ended with a bang.