Eloise fancies herself something of a latter-day Jonah and describes her life as a "half-alive hermitude": she avoids windows, minds the cats, plays the cello, and needs much time to recover from various human interactions (glance from stranger = ten minutes, speaking to postman = half an hour, chat with neighbor = two hours). George is an American writer painfully dependent on rich, dull patrons who wonders whether he'll ever finish his epic poem about ice hockey. Ed grows giant vegetables and sends letter bombs to women in the news. The Evil Doctor is just, well, evil.

Ominous facts about bees and ants thread their stories, as do scores of compulsive lists -- the largest animal litters, the contents of an apartment, the elements that constitute seawater -- the kind of banal data that distracts us from our true dilemma: how to love in a loveless world. Man or Mango? demands to be reckoned with and confirms the arrival of a major -- and brutally funny -- writer.