A man tells his life story leading up to his suicide, attempting to explain the seemingly-inescapable mental paradoxes he found himself facing in his quest to be an authentic person, which reinforced, time after time, his belief that he was a fraud.

When a perpetually unlucky Nigerian American law school dropout meets her parents’ dream son-in-law, she has to pick between finally meeting her parents’ expectations for her and retaining control over her own life, as tempestuous and miserable as it is.

A woman considers her possible shortcomings when her boyfriend tells her that he doesn’t like some things about her. After a period of reflection, she acknowledges the futility of self-deprecation.

A successful gentleman whose ventures have recently failed goes on a miserable quest to find a seam of ore, following a questionable character who claims to have found it.

An accomplished but ineffectual columnist searches for fulfillment, until a death in the family causes him to question the family he took for granted.

A typical nice-guy colleague with a toxically positive attitude delivers an exhortation to his colleagues about eliminating self-doubt so as to increase work performance.

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

In this metafiction, the many lives of an unnamed man are scrutinized as he passes through millennia.

A writer gives an account of his friend Dr. Tokai, a kind and sophisticated plastic surgeon who died after his first real heartbreak.

After two of a man's acquaintances die by suicide, he goes on a hunting trip and can't stop thinking about why they wanted to die.