At one point, the shimmer says, thoughtfully, “It’s all puddles and ripples. That’s what time is for me,” and with this line, another connecting strand in the book is illuminated (aside from the reoccurrence of bodies of water). Namely, the uncontrollable passage of time. From Basil’s impending death, to the fragility of life on the second tallest mountain on earth, to a mother tortuously awaiting the late-night return of her son, to a man preparing for his pregnant wife’s return, it seems that every person is on the cusp of something, and life is always moving by either much to slowly or much too fast. Characters grow older and are born, and when they aren’t mired in the past they are looking optimistically ahead. One man thinks that “[t]omorrow he can do… things better than he did today. Tomorrow! Tomorrow!” Another plans a future with a woman in which “they would be a couple that flew around on weekends and on vacations, in small aircraft. They would learn the terminology. They would join clubs.” The time-conscious, future-oriented movement of people throughout the book is brought to life through descriptions startling in their concise but vivid truth. Eggers can do things with a handful of words that most writers cannot do in a page.

The title of the collection itself, another one of Eggers’ pithy, though-provoking phrases, speaks of the desires and needs of each and every character, which range from romantic to obscure to impossible. We are each hungry in different ways, but it cannot be denied that every person – and dog – in Eggers’ stories and in life, is yearning for something, and this hunger often remains unsatisfied. This feeling of discontent, of nothing ever being enough, is challenged by Eggers in the water-based story mentioned earlier. After dragging us through a string of disappointed oddballs and late night dreamers, of men who jump from hotel roofs and tape that doesn’t stick, the author gives us one moment that outshines the darker ones, tellingly, in its simplicity. A woman is standing among the waves, warm as “the inside of a plum.” She plans not to move until the sun disappears. “It was oil-wet water, and it felt perfect when Pilar put her hand into it, and it kissed her palm again and again, would never stop kissing her palm and why wasn’t that enough?” Why indeed.