May 1, 2022
Booker Prize winner Saunders returns with a pungent collection featuring characters ranging from a man advising his grandson during futuristic dystopian times, an octogenarian whose memory has been scraped in a project to reprogram the less fortunate as political protesters, and a man working the hell-themed section of an amusement park who starts rethinking his presumptions in life.
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August 22, 2022
Booker winner Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo) returns to the short form with a wide-ranging collection that alternates his familiar fun house of warped simulations with subtler dramas. In “Ghoul,” actors playing demons at an Inferno-esque attraction called “Maws of Hell” succumb to workplace rivalries under the watchful eye of their managers. “Love Letter,” set in a Trumpist dystopia where “loyalists” report dissenters for infractions, takes the form of a man’s cautionary letter to his defiant grandson. The title story imagines a sinister company whose employees, little more than programs, are forced to recreate Custer’s last stand. Other stories probe loss, regret, and hopefulness. “The Mom of Bold Action” follows a frustrated writer and housewife facing turmoil when her son is attacked by at least one of two identical old creeps. “Mother’s Day” explores the inner life of a once feisty elderly woman now living at a remove from the world after her daughter runs away from home. “Elliot Spencer” combines futurism and pathos as a mind-wiped counterprotester suddenly recovers his identity. Saunders’s four previous collections shook the earth a bit harder, but he continues to humanize those whom society has worn down to a nub. Despite the author’s shift to quieter character studies, there’s plenty to satisfy longtime devotees.
Starred review from December 9, 2022
From employees creepily compelled to reenact Custer's Last Stand in a surreal (if utterly persuasive) account of powerful control from on high, to a grandfather's pleading letter to a rebellious grandson amid dystopian crisis within a watchful state where loyalists are rewarded and resisters severely punished, Booker Prize winner Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo) reveals just how good he is at suggesting crucial aspects of today's world in eerie, unexpected settings. In yet another chilling example of overt control, marginalized individuals are being reprogrammed as political protesters, and there's a hell-themed amusement park readers will likely never want to visit, loaded with expectation and workplace tension. On the surface, Saunders's language is disturbing and hypnotic, but it's the currents underneath that really catch readers and pull them under. However surprising the premise or disorienting its unfolding, it's hard to stop reading. VERDICT Saunders's writing is utterly original, and this first collection in nearly a decade will intrigue his fans and readers of short fiction generally.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
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Starred review from August 15, 2022
What can't George Saunders do? On the basis of his work since Tenth of December (2013), the answer seems to be nothing at all. The stories in that collection marked a turning point in a career that already seemed remarkable, a deepening of empathy and scope. In the works that followed--the astonishing novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) and last year's A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, which, among other things, may be the greatest craft book ever assembled--Saunders has revealed himself to be nothing less than an American Gogol: funny, pointed, full of nuance, and always writing with a moral heart. This, his first book of short fiction in nearly a decade, only cements the validity of such a point of view. The nine pieces here are smart and funny, speculative yet at the same time written on a human scale, narratives full of love and loss and longing and the necessity of trying to connect. Dedicated readers will recognize five stories from the New Yorker, but they only grow upon rereading, revealing new depths. "Ghoul" recalls Saunders' magnificent CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, taking place in a subterranean amusement park where employees wait for visitors who never come. Brutally punished for the slightest infractions, the narrator, Brian, comes to a radical decision: "Though I will not live to see it," he tells us, "...may these words play some part in bringing the old world down." This notion of upheaval, or collapse, also motivates "Elliott Spencer," about an elderly man reprogrammed to be a crisis actor of sorts in political protests, and "A Thing at Work," where an escalating office dispute disrupts life outside the workplace. "He had kids. He had a mortgage," a character reflects about the potential fallout. "This was the real world." What Saunders is addressing is not just identity, but also responsibility, to each other and to ourselves. This emerges most fully in the title effort, a Severance-like saga set in an alternate reality, where three workers, known as "Speakers"--there are also "Singers"--are indentured to entertain a family. A tour de force collection that showcases all of Saunders' many skills.
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Starred review from August 1, 2022
Prior to his Booker Prize-winning first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), the short story was Saunders' forte. In his fifth collection, boldly imagined tales are catalyzed by outright and insidious assaults on our most basic rights, including freedom of mind. Language and memories are essential for understanding oneself, others, and the world; when they are stolen, we lose our autonomy and liberty, scenarios Saunders choreographs with unnerving specificity. Focused on how employment can be fertile ground for "mind-washing," even enslavement, Saunders envisions an extensive underground amusement park from which there is no escape and, in another tale, the transformation of poor and unhoused individuals into "human robots" programmed to participate in violent demonstrations. In the resounding title story, sweet, trusting Jeremy and other captives are turned into puppets forced to perform elaborate orations for the elite, including an exceptionally detailed, ironically devastating telling of Custer's Last Stand. Saunders' vision of diabolically intrusive tyranny undermining democracy possesses the keen absurdity of Kurt Vonnegut, while his more subtle stories align with the gothic edge of Shirley Jackson, acutely attuned in every situation to the complexities of emotions and the tentacles of society. Saunders is also caustically funny, mischievously romantic, and profoundly compassionate, and each of these flawless fables inspires reflection on the fragility of freedom and the valor of the human spirit. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Audacious, caring, and brilliant literary-fiction star Saunders has an ardent readership ready for more.
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