Tenth of December: Stories, 2013, is a collection of short stories by George Saunders.
In the opening story, Victory Lap, a young boy bears witness to an abduction of his next door neighbor. His harrowing choice? Ignore what he sees, or overcome years of advice from his parents and act.
In Home, a combat veteran moves back home with his mother, struggling to reconcile two very different realities.
In the title tale Tenth of December, a cancer patient wanders to the woods to end his life, only to find a troubled youth who just might give the him a second chance to remember and regain himself.
The unforgettable characters, beyond just these, who live in the pages of this short story collection are imbibed with color and with empathy. As always, the signature prose of Saunder's blends innovation with a deep touch of humanity.
George Saunders was born in 1958 in Texas. Raised in the suburbs of Chicago, he received his undergraduate degree in geophysical engineering. He later obtained an M.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University. He worked as both technical writer and geophysical engineer for Radian International, an environmental engineering firm, and for a time with an oil exploration crew in Sumatra. In 1997 he began teaching creative writing with the Syracuse MFA program, all while publishing critically acclaimed fiction and nonfiction. He has received the MacArthur and the Guggenheim Fellowship and has been published in Harper's, The New Yorker, McSweeney's and GQ. With a tragicomic element to his writing, he often focuses on the absurdity of consumer and corporate culture as well as mass media.
"This is George Saunders' most recent collection of short stories, and they are very much of this time and place. Each story dissects the body politic using a different tool, but the lesion Saunders discovers is always the same. Saunders' collection of misfits, losers and diseased protagonists all face a moral dilemma which forces them to choose between moral integrity and obeying the rules and regulations of a morally bankrupt society. In the first story, 'Victory Lap', a very nervous young man must choose between violating the directives of his tyrannical father and rescuing the girl next door on whom he has a crush. This story is a clinic on the art of building suspense in narrative. In one of the futuristic pieces, which includes homages to Orwell and, most especially Anthony Burgess, a juvenile murderer has been volunteered by his parents to serve as a guinea pig for psycho-pharmaceutical research in lieu of prison. Again, he must choose between saving the life of a fellow guinea pig and provisionally ensuring his own continued well-being. A returning war veteran who has lost his marriage, his home, his prospects of earning a living, wants to kill his deadbeat mom and her deadbeat boyfriend, his perfect sister and her perfect husband and perfect children and perfect in-laws; again, the suspense is built slowly and so subtly that the reader is like the proverbial frog in the proverbial pan of water heated slowly to the boiling point. An employee at a Medieval Theme Park must choose between job advancement and concealing the fact that his supervisor uses his position to coerce his female subordinates into having sex with him. In the longest of the stories, 'The Semplica Girl Diaries', Saunders takes the reader into a bizarre possible future in which young women from third world countries, dressed in starched, immaculate white linen and strung together on a thin wire passed through their skulls, are the most coveted symbols of elevated social status. When the spoiled daughter of an upwardly mobile father and status conscious mother questions the ethics of this practice, she is identified as a trouble-maker by her teachers, her peers and her parents. So, is it possible to remain true to one's moral code and succeed within a system that requires systematic violation of the Golden Rule in order to function? Saunders answer is: yes, it is possible, even necessary, but it may very well cost you your life."
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Mark (5 out of 5 stars)