That book was met with whoops of joy: "scary, hilarious and unforgettable" announced Tobias Wolff "wildly funny, pure, generous" applauded Garrison Keillor "graceful, dark, authentic, and funny" cheered Thomas Pynchon (Thomas Pynchon!). Saunders emerged fully formed with his 1996 debut, Civilwarland in Bad Decline. But reading his new collection, Tenth of December, it seems like he's stuck. Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December-through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit-not only entertain and delight they fulfill Chekhovs dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness.G eorge Saunders – Texas-born, Chicago-raised, seven books, many prizes, satirist, Buddhist – is one of America's best short-story writers. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human. Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store two mothers struggling to do the right thing a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill-the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunderss signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.
And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. In the taut opener, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.
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