This is a boxed set of three flash fiction collections. The first thing I want to point out is a kind of bait and switch. The cover art for the box depicts some sort of concert on a ruined stage with several bears in attendance, flaming geysers, and a generally surreal scene which may include a woman pouring some sort of liquid that makes the ground disappear while a bear watches, standing on two legs, not to mention a discarded accordion lying on its side beside a structure while smoke pours out. Upon seeing this, I couldn't wait to read the story about the bears at the apocalyptic concert. I raced through each collection, hoping the next story would be the one. There's no such story; I'll go ahead and tell you that. Eggers has a (very funny) story about bears, but there's no concert, no accordion, no melting ground. I was, to say the least, disappointed.

Let's start at the beginning. Sarah Manguso's stories are each a paragraph long. In fact, the acknowledgements listing is longer than most of her stories. They follow a kind of diary format, meditating on day-to-day details in the life of a young woman, tracking the progression of her childhood and teen years, with a bit of adulthood. These stories capture small ah-ha moments, the discoveries that build experience, like the first time a child gets in trouble at school, or a teen crush. They are quiet stories and realistic. These are the shortest stories in the boxed set, and it is a feat that Manguso is able to craft complete works of such brevity, but, and I can't stress this enough, none of them are about bears.

Eggers' stories are longer and more detailed, though he has a few single paragraph long ones as well. Many of these are funny, sometimes surreal stories about connections between people, though occasionally, he seems to work harder for the joke than the story. But there are moments of real accomplishment. The title story, "How the Water Feels to the Fishes," encapsulates a beautiful kind of yearning for understanding (how does the water feel to fishes?). "The Man Who" deals with the man who invented hanging, not because he was a sadist, but simply because he could, and actually couldn't remember why he invented it. It is a nice commentary on the need for perspective. These are more outwardly focused stories than Manguso's. To compare these two collections, I'd have to use the words "bears." Eggers' collection has them, Manguso's doesn't. No apocalyptic concert, but at least it's progress.

Deb Olin Unferth has to be some sort of anagram or something; it can't possibly be a real name. Regardless, the stories in her collection are longer than Eggers, more involved. Many of them are about relationships, some are surreal, many have to do with a kind of betrayal of safety—characters are robbed, characters are made to realize that their safe vision of a world or relationship was inaccurate. They are wrenched from the womb of complacency and shown a larger, more dangerous world.

There are no bears in Unferth's collection, but of these 3 collections, this one feels the most complete, the most like the traditional idea of "stories", but captured succinctly and perfectly, so that I don't mind as much the missing bears, though I am still a bit sore about it. Actually, I'd have to say the collections build nicely from Manguso's tight prose and self-focused characters to Eggers's broadening curiosity and social inquiry, to Unferth's sometimes fearful realizations. They are, definitely, three different talents, each with her or his own strengths. The boxed-set format allows readers to be exposed to styles s/he might've overlooked in one handy collection. There are not enough bears, but that could really be said of any situation.

-CL Bledsoe