Taking its title from a group of stories that begin the book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups moves from contemporary L.A. to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the reader into a universe of social misfits, reimagines scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece, a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by his sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide (This situation reminds be of a little historical blip called the Karadordevo agreement); in another, a college freshman forced to live with a roommate is stunned when one of her ramen packets goes missing (She didn't have "one" of my ramens. She had a chicken ramen); in another piece, Alexander Graham Bell has teething problems with his invention (I've been calling Mabel all day, she doesn't pick up Yes, of course I dialed the right number--2 ).

In these forty-four stories, Eisenberg combines personal elements with highly imaginative settings, combining tenderness with a tragedy that lurks behind the jokey humor. The pieces, wryly amusing as single stories, become as a whole a touching exploration of the psychology of their protagonists.

United by Eisenberg's gift for character, and grouped into chapters that open with illustrations by award-winning cartoonist Jean Jullien, the witty and moving pieces collected in Bream Gives Me Hiccups explore the various insanities of the modern world, and mark the arrival of a talented, self-ironic, and original writer.