Tenth of December: Stories Author: George Saunders | Language: English | ISBN:
B008LMB4C2 | Format: PDF
Tenth of December: Stories Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYPeople • The New York Times Magazine • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • New York • BuzzFeed • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage • Shelf AwarenessOne 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.
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. 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. 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 Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.
Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. 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.
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 Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.”
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“The best book you’ll read this year.”
—The New York Times Magazine “A feat of inventiveness . . . This eclectic collection never ceases to delight with its at times absurd, surreal, and darkly humorous look at very serious subjects. . . . George Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time.”
—Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner “The best short-story writer in English—not ‘one of,’ not ‘arguably,’ but the Best.”
—Mary Karr, Time “A visceral and moving act of storytelling . . . No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchised.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Saunders’s startling, dreamlike stories leave you feeling newly awakened to the world.”
—People “It’s no exaggeration to say that short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction.”
—The Wall Street Journal
GEORGE SAUNDERS WAS NAMED ONE OF THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD BY TIME MAGAZINEFrom the Hardcover edition.- File Size: 1513 KB
- Print Length: 271 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 140883734X
- Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (January 8, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B008LMB4C2
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,817 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #3
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- #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Satire - #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Satire - #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Satire
I found it interesting that this book places the only two somewhat upbeat stories in the collection at the beginning and the end, as if the editor thought that doing this might help to disguise the unremitting darkness of the stories that make up most of the book. I'm afraid the effect is more along the lines of a gloom sandwich, in which the relatively upbeat slices of bread do little to mask the depressive filling.
Of course, my reaction is largely a matter of personal taste. I think George Saunders is a remarkable writer and a true artist, but for me, there's just too much darkness and ugliness in this collection to stomach.
Some notes on selected stories:
"Victory Lap" is the opening story, and therefor one of the two fairly upbeat pieces I mentioned. It indulges in an engaging playfulness with language (as do most of the stories in this collection, to some extent), but apart from that I found it a story with unrealistic characters in an unrealistic situation that comes to an unrealistic conclusion.
"Puppies" extends that playfulness with language into the realm of just-plain-hard-to-read. I was reminded of a recent quote from Booker Prize judge Peter Strothard, stating that literary works of art "have to offer a degree of resistance." This story offers resistance in spades, and in return for chewing through that resistance you get one of the most gruelingly dark stories I've ever read. In this story and a few others, it feels to me that Saunders is approaching outright sadism toward his characters.
"Escape from Spiderhead" is another example of this.
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