George Saunders (1) (1958–)

Either a Kafka-esque or a Beckett-esque society collapsed under the weight of expectations. A father working the worst imaginable job to provide for his sick son. A male stripper whose family is upset that he doesn't bring home more money, and is haunted by his dead grandmother (who encourages him to show his cock). A barber trying to win a date with any girl desperate enough to have him, so long as she doesn't seem too desperate.
Each story is hilarious and heartbreaking. Deeply American show more and deeply for our times. show less

I listened to the audiobook, largely because, knowing how I dislike history, I thought I’d bog down if I tried to read in print. At the beginning of the audiobook, I began to worry that with 166 narrators and footnotes(!) interspersed, it would be chaos. I’m pleased to report that I was neither bogged down nor was it at all confusing. I can’t imagine a better way to present this novel in audio form. I think even that the multitude of voices brought the bardo to life (so to speak) show more better than print could have done. The novel itself is a beautiful meditation on grief, regret, vengeance, and, peripherally, the Civil War. show less

Our {death} caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory. ... And yet. ... And yet no one had ever come here to hold one of us, while speaking so tenderly. ... Ever.

No one until Abraham Lincoln, that is, whose real-life grief over the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie, was so consuming show more that he was reported to have visited the cemetery to hold the child’s body.

And so it is in this novel, narrated in an experimental structure by a group of spirits who, having resisted (some for years, some for centuries) to fully crossover from life to afterlife, welcome Willie and witness Abraham Lincoln’s visit. Woven alongside the spirits’ narratives are quotations from historical records and writings about Lincoln (some real, some invented). Altogether, what develops is a rich, evocative broth -- of grief for sure, and of despair over a war-effort that is failing. But also of respect for Lincoln and fascination of these spirits’ lives, lived at different times in early American history.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.) show less

With George Saunders you get truth embedded in satire. You also get lines like this: “My counselor is Mr. Poppet, a gracious and devout man who’s always tightening his butt cheeks when he thinks no one’s looking.”

And this: “Out on the street it’s cold and a wino’s standing in a Dumpster calling a stray cat Uncle Chuck.”

Another: “How can you take the word of a man with biscuit crumbs under his nose and a habit of walking around holding his hand over his anus for fear of show more violation?”

All is not right in the world, but it can be awfully funny.

The six stories and one novella in this collection are littered with beautiful, sad and humorous moments. In The 400 Pound CEO an extremely obese man has “a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy.”

Saunders’ people are not “perfect creatures,” the beautiful ones that “run roughshod over the rest of us.” They are the vastly imperfect, the downtrodden, the losers. And he tells beautiful stories with them. show less