Jesse Eisenberg

Allen & Unwin, $29.99

Review by Daniel Herborn

In the key scene of The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg (as Mark Zuckerberg), came face to face with his peculiar dilemma; as the brilliant but polarising CEO of Facebook he was the smartest guy in the room whose superior prickliness eventually rendered him the only guy in the room.

Eisenberg's first fiction collection after a well-received series of appearances in The New Yorker and McSweeney's (and a sideline as a playwright) sees him working a similar corner as his defining role; many of these slim stories focus on over-educated, hyper-literate individuals whose intellectual capital translates to little in the way of success, calm or happiness.

One such character is a divorced, borderline alcoholic mother who appears in a series of reviews written by her son, a budding 9-year-old food critic. Rating each restaurant (or social occasion) out of 2000 stars, he turns his critical gaze to his school canteen, an obnoxious meditation retreat, a depressing bar and even an internet predator.

His naïve but preternaturally sensitive perspective sees him unintentionally skewer both his mother's essential awfulness and the grating pretentions of the establishments they visit together.

Elsewhere, a man seeks relationship advice from cliché-spouting basketball caller Marv Albert and a post-gender-normative man suggests a woman buy him a drink only to find his egg-headed theorising brutally rejected. This is satire with claws, but not without empathy.

Many of the pieces are strictly one-joke ideas, but the acidic likes of My Mother Explains the Ballet to Me, a stingingly funny monologue delivered by a thoroughly awful person, make their point and get out in just a couple of pages. Similarly pungent is My Little Sister Texts Me with Her Problems, where a melodramatic exchange escalates in surreal and hilarious fashion.

The latter is one of several pieces to take the form of email and text exchanges, finding nuance in the inane rhythms of these communications. Yet another has a father passive-aggressively rewriting the prescription information for his son's various medications.

While many of these bite-sized stories zing with topicality, Eisenberg can also transplant his uncomfortable humour to the distant-seeming past. One vignette finds a frustrated Alexander Graham Bell whining that his invention of the telephone isn't quite the girl magnet he thought it would be.

Dazzlingly funny and possessing a humane heart beneath its acerbic, anxiety-riddled exterior, Eisenberg's first collection rates 2000 out of 2000 stars.