DAVE EGGERS’S THE FORGETTERS SUBSCRIPTION

This item is a subscription. If you select all six titles you will receive the first two immediately (within reason). If you select the 2024 titles only, your subscription will begin with The Keeper of the Ornaments and continue throughout the year. To purchase the first two installments alone, click here.

Introducing The Forgetters Series.

The Forgetters will someday be a probably-overlong novel by Dave Eggers; when the whole thing will be finished is anyone’s guess. But in the meantime, we’re releasing standalone, short-story-sized portions of the book as beautiful mini hardcovers. Each minibook is a complete short story, independent of the eventual whole. The series began with The Museum of Rain, a moving testament to family, memory, and what we leave behind—and continued in 2023 with The Honor of Your Presence—a very funny and lyrical referendum on why humans congregate and celebrate.

The series will now roll out over the course of 2024 beginning with the upcoming The Keeper of the Ornaments, and followed shortly thereafter with The Comebacker, which originally appeared in The Atlantic. Two more titles will follow later this year. All available in pocket-sized hardcovers with stunning cover art by Angel Chang, The Forgetters will be available exclusively to McSweeney’s readers and subscribers until November of this year, and can be subscribed to as a complete series or with 2024’s installments alone.

Here’s a look at what you’ll find coming your way:

The Museum of Rain
Oisín Mahoney is an American Army vet in his seventies who is asked to lead a group of young grand-nieces and grand-nephews on a walk through the hills of California’s Central Coast. Walking toward a setting sun, their destination is a place called The Museum of Rain, which may or may not still exist, and whose origin and meaning are elusive to all.

The Honor of Your Presence
In this long short story, or short novella, Dave Eggers gives us an unforgettable duo, Helen and Peter Mahoney, a homebody niece and her adventurous, almost-British uncle. Helen designs invitations to parties and galas to which she is not welcome, and is quite comfortable with that. One day, though, Peter wonders, “Why not print an extra invite and I’ll be your plus one?” What starts out as an innocuous lark becomes much more—a very funny and lyrical referendum on why humans congregate and celebrate.

The Keeper of the Ornaments
Cole lives alone, has no pets, and has grown accustomed to a homelife of profound quiet (not to say tedium). When Daphne and her two young children move into the apartment next door, the noise is extraordinary—impossible to believe, really—and Cole assumes he’ll have to move. But his new neighbors, and their very odd cats, see him differently than he sees himself, and he soon adopts an entirely new persona, that of an older gentleman in a cardigan, ready to assist and advise.

The Comebacker
Lionel is a beat reporter covering the San Francisco Giants — an enviable job if not for the soggy fries, and the so-so weather, and the Giants’ losing record. His colleagues are even more dissatisfied, mired in statistics and myopia and complaints about a certain elevator that is really too slow. One day, though, a new pitcher, Nathan Couture, is brought up from the minor leagues; he’s tall and lanky and talks like no one they’ve ever covered. Even more startling is Nathan’s actual interest in the words Lionel writes, and his rare, even unprecedented, ability to see the beauty in the game he’s paid to play.

Where the Candles Are Kept
Oisín Mahoney, in his early seventies, lives off the grid in rural Idaho, at the base of a steep pine-covered mountain. In his tilted cabin, he has no room for Calla and Torin, his grand-niece and grand-nephew, two seemingly sullen California teenagers sent to him one summer. But crises in their lives at home necessitate time away, to live a slower, less complicated life for a spell. Within minutes of landing at the airport, though, the teenagers begin plotting their escape. In this suspenseful and wry short story, Oisín and Calla and Torin are forced to decide who and what they care about, and if they have any role in the saving of a life.