Oct 13

Oct 13 Liberation Day: Stories

Author: George Saunders
Publisher: Random House
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

MacArthur genius and Booker Prize winner George Saunders returns with a collection of short stories that make sense of our increasingly troubled world, his first since the New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist Tenth of December

The "best short story writer in English" (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose--wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned--Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.

"Love Letter" is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson, in the midst of a dystopian political situation in the not-too-distant future, that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and each other. "Ghoul" is set in a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado, and follows the exploits of a lonely, morally complex character named Brian, who comes to question everything he takes for granted about his "reality." In "Mother's Day," two women who loved the same man come to an existential reckoning in the middle of a hailstorm. And in "Elliott Spencer," our eighty-nine-year-old protagonist finds himself brainwashed--his memory "scraped"--a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters.

Together, these nine subversive, profound, and essential stories coalesce into a case for viewing the world with the same generosity and clear-eyed attention as Saunders does, even in the most absurd of circumstances.

TL;DR Review

Liberation Day is just plain short story writing at its best. George has given us a deeply human collection of unforgettable characters and plenty to think about.

For you if: You like slightly weird short stories.

Full Review

TY, Random House, for the gifted copy of this book! George Saunders is undoubtedly one of the best short story writers of our day, and so when I saw that he had a new collection coming out, I couldn’t let it pass me by. Thank goodness I didn’t! It’s just as good as we expected it to be (and maybe more).

All nine stories here are deeply human and fun to read, even when the topics are heavy. They’re also imaginative, sometimes dipping a pinky toe into sci-fi in the best way (the title story is about a man, pinned up on a wall and fed lines as entertainment for guests, who falls in love with his “owner’s” wife). They ask us: what is our reality? What is our responsibility inside that reality? What is the true self? Is control over others ever ethical? What does it mean to have hope in defiance of the world around us?

One other thing I loved was that a few of these stories played with multiple narrators, which you so rarely see in short fiction. But George and his incredible character and voice work pulls it off and then some, spinning us to greater depth and unfolding the plot like a puzzle.

Finally, let me implore you to please listen to the audiobook WHILE you read along with the print copy! Like with Lincoln in the Bardo, the cast of narrators is too good to miss (I especially loved Tina Fey’s performance of the second story), but there are some (especially the first and eighth stories) that will be hard to follow on audio alone. BOTH is the way to go, just trust me!