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Tenth of December

George Saunders

3.96 · Rating details · 64,289 ratings · 7,269 reviews

A new story collection, the first in six years, from one of our greatest living writers, MacArthur "genius grant" recipient and New Yorker contributor George Saunders.

George Saunders, one of our most important writers, is back with a masterful, deeply felt collection that takes his literary powers to a new level. In a recent interview, when asked how he saw the role of the ...more

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Paperback, 288 pages

Published November 2nd 2017 by Bloomsbury Paperbacks (first published January 3rd 2013)

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Feb 14, 2013 Diana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, 2013

The first and last stories in this book are, I think, masterpieces, and affected me more than I would have thought possible-- they're just short stories, after all. In the first one, a dreamy teenage girl is in her house, having fantasies about her own kindness and attractiveness. After only reading her narrative for a minute or two, I felt completely involved, which is uncommon in my experience of short stories. Next I was in the head of a neighbor boy, who is just coming home, the many, many ...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

Reading short story collections in one sitting is ill-advised, particularly when they can be as emotionally coals-rakey as Saunders can be. However, there's a certain cloudy state my head can fall in from time to time where he is one of the only voices out there that doesn't make me feel condescended, and can make me laugh despite myself. You know how it is when your brain refuses to be pleased, where you for no good reason just pout like a grade-schooler who doesn't like her birthday present, a ...more

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Apr 30, 2013 Paul Bryant rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-modern-americans

It's aggravating when all the critics turn out to be right and us readers just feel like we're trooping along behind them baa-ing and bleating obediently George Saunders go-o-o-o-d, Dan Brown ba-a-a-a-d. The cover of this book is festooned like a Chrismas tree with blurby simperings from Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Jon McGregor and o, yes, Thomas Pynchon. I guess after that lot they couldn't be bothered to call up Philip Roth, Barack Obama or Nelson Mandela. I bet those three ...more

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Jan 19, 2013 brian rated it it was ok · review of another edition

the level of genius ain't sufficient to disguise the fact that most of these stories lack heart*. consider DFW and maureen mchugh, both of whom paint with roughly the same palette -- y'know, the pomo'ey, quirky, capitalism & consumerism, blahblahstuff-white-people-like-etcetcetc** -- but whose stories feel not only topical and cultural-critiquey but also weighty and alive. saunders seems in love with an idea and kind of schematically lays it out as if a mere essay in the short, quirky fiction fo ...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Steve rated it really liked it · review of another edition

You know those disconcerting dreams where nothing you can do will seem right; lose-lose propositions are the only ones on offer? Well George Saunders is the large deluxe pizza you ate before bed. He's the likely culprit.

I started with a comment about Saunders himself because his stories, and collections in general, are hard to review. Plot summaries don’t really work because there are too many of them. Unifying themes aren’t always easy to come by either. Even if there are common threads, they’ You know those disconcerting dreams where nothing you can do will seem right; lose-lose propositions are the only ones on offer? Well George Saunders is the large deluxe pizza you ate before bed. He's the likely culprit.

I started with a comment about Saunders himself because his stories, and collections in general, are hard to review. Plot summaries don’t really work because there are too many of them. Unifying themes aren’t always easy to come by either. Even if there are common threads, they’re often obscured, as though anything obvious would go against the short fiction writers' creed. Which brings me to another point. Might it often be more accurate to call a “short” story a “truncated” story instead? They’re not so much whole stories that happen to be short as much as ones that might have been whole but were lopped off – skipping background, transitions, and even endings. But that can make them fun puzzles to solve. Any discomfort we get from our fragmented look can be included in that all-important category of conflict. But none of this helps the reviewer.

Yet, hard as it may be to frame, this book is crying out for a discussion. I think it’s fair to say that Saunders is the flavor of the month. When the NY Times Magazine features an article called “George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year,” we can assume there’s a buzz about him in Lit World. Those familiar with his past work applaud this one for its greater realism. It still has absurd elements, but each story is allowed to find its most natural, relatable way to be told. Wasn’t there some famous sculptor who said he never knew what object would come from a big chunk of marble until he started chipping away to find out? The more mature Saunders evidently has less use for surrealism and I suspect his empathy is more apparent when his people seem more real. Having read only a few of his stories before this, I can only speculate.

His style may have evolved, but his targets have not. He’s still the class warrior he always was. That said, I never found his characters to be pat. For instance, I don’t think he equated being poor with being noble or right, rather, just people to be pitied. To Saunders, capitalism is hard, with a whole range of possibilities within the construct. In an interview, he was thinking back on his own leaner times and said, “the cumulative effect of an absence of wealth was the erosion of grace.” As a younger man he was an Ayn Rand acolyte. When he fell away, he fell hard and it politicized him. It makes the piece he wrote for the New Yorker, posing as Rand’s former young lover, all the more prickly as a satire. His liberal sentiments are well-established, but he can surprise us with human tendencies at odds with them. For instance, one story called “Semplica Girls” came to him in a dream. He said in the linked interview,

“I went to a window that didn’t exist in our house, and I looked into the yard, and I saw a row of what I understood in the dream logic to be third-world women who had a wire through their heads,” he said. “Instead of horror, my reaction was like, ‘Yeah, we did it.’ Just like if you’d gotten a new car or a kid into school or something, that feeling of, I’ve come such a long way, I’m able to give these things to my family. And there was a sense that there was an alleviated shame.”

If I were to point to a common element in these stories, I’d say that they’re good at maximizing our discomfort. They do their damnedest to pose moral dilemmas. We’re led to a point where we want to judge, but can’t quite do it. There but for the grace of good fortune goes the reader – a statement that speaks to the compassion that Saunders elicits. My favorite story, the title piece that was put at the end, was somewhat of a contrast to the moral quandaries that preceded it. An unpopular schoolboy was walking home lost in a reverie, casting himself as a hero to impress a girl, when he encountered a coatless man in the snow who was hoping to front-run a death decreed by cancer. Preferred courses of action were clear, and they were ennobling. It was a nice note to end on. Humanity scored a clear winner for once.

I’ll close with a reference to a conversation Saunders had at one time with DFW, J. Franzen and B. Marcus on the topic of the ultimate aspirations of fiction. (How many of us would gladly have been maggots on the molding of that room?)

“The thing on the table was emotional fiction. How do we make it? How do we get there? Is there something yet to be discovered? These were about the possibly contrasting desire to: (1) write stories that had some sort of moral heft and/or were not just technical exercises or cerebral games; while (2) not being cheesy or sentimental or reactionary.”

I’m not sure this collection met the goal completely, but I could tell that it tried. Let’s give him credit for that.
...more

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Dec 30, 2013 Kemper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 2014, short-stories, modern-lit, dystopia, plain-old-fiction

One of the stories in this collection features experimental drugs that can enhance someone’s verbal ability to describe an event. I feel like I could use a few doses of that stuff to help me review this book because I’m struggling to articulate what I found so good about it.

At a basic level, there are ten short stories that reminded me somewhat of Kurt Vonnegut because Saunders uses sci-fi concepts and humor in several of them to depict various aspects of human nature, but this has some nastier ...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Natalie Tyler rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: recent-fiction-mediocre, not-my-style

Saunders is not for me; he is cut from a cloth that I cannot comfortably wear. I would categorize him with Pynchon, Eggers, Donald Barthelme, de Lillo, David Foster Wallace, Thom Jones, and Ward Just. I just cannot get along with these authors, just like I cannot get along with certain types of music. I can search for a sentence or two that is remarkable but I just cannot go with their flow.

I like so many authors and there are so many books that I will never read because I will have died first, ...more

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Feb 06, 2013 MJ Nicholls rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to MJ by: Joshua Nomen-Mutatio

Shelves: short-stories, merkins

My second foray into Saunders after a lukewarm response to Pastoralia was an unprecedented success. His writing has sharpened its teeth and mellowed its heart and toned down its comedic chutzpah and the results are staggering pieces like ‘Escape From Spiderhead,’ a short moral parable that builds to a slow, devastating climax, ‘The Semplica Girl Diaries,’ a long moral parable that unfurls creepier revelations and a deeper-rooted sadness with each page, and ‘Home,’ a medium-sized moral parable th ...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Diane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

I like reading short stories but I hate writing about them. A short story is so fleeting and ephemeral -- it's like trying to describe a cloud.

This collection of 10 short stories by George Saunders is especially difficult and elusive. His writing is rich and visual, but there is always danger lurking for each character. I had to take a pause break after finishing each story because I felt so unsettled.

My favorite stories were "Victory Lap," which involved two high school students and a traumatic ...more

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Jan 25, 2018 Matthew Quann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, short-story-collections, short-story-challenge-2018, whip-smart, favourites

I knew that I liked George Saunders' after loving last year's Lincoln in the Bardo , but this short story collection made me want to run out and grab everything else he's done. There's a palpable thrill to picking up one of Saunders' stories, which show an immense range over the course of ten individual tales of varying length. I always looked forward to reading this collection because I never knew which Saunders I'd be encountering. While one of the more recent collections I read had very go I knew that I liked George Saunders' after loving last year's Lincoln in the Bardo , but this short story collection made me want to run out and grab everything else he's done. There's a palpable thrill to picking up one of Saunders' stories, which show an immense range over the course of ten individual tales of varying length. I always looked forward to reading this collection because I never knew which Saunders I'd be encountering. While one of the more recent collections I read had very good variations on a similar theme, Saunders goes all over the map with some key touchstones.

In particular, I'd forgotten how outright hilarious Saunders can be. In stories like Victory Lap, Saunders turns a terrifying adolescent abduction into an examination of the teenage mind that is as hilarious as it is thrilling. Throughout the collection Saunders pulls off these feats of juxtaposition that both elevate and humanize the subject matter. In Escape from Spiderhead, we follow a man working at an experimental lab conducting research into alteration of the human experience through pharmacology that had me laughing at the start before dovetailing into horror before its conclusion.

My least favourite story of the bunch, The Semplica Girls Diary, took the most work. As with all his other stories, Saunders uses a device to guide his characters' voice. In this case, it is a first time writer summarizing his day just before bed. This character uses a truncated writing style in order to get all his thoughts down before bed that was both a challenge to read and didn't make its full impact until later in the story (though it is the longest in the collection). Despite my quibbles, this is actually a much better story than many others I've read.

This edition of the book came with an interview of George Saunders by David Sedaris. I'm a huge fan of Sedaris so I was more than happy to read insights into the stories of The Tenth of December, some of which I shared, while others offered a new angle that I hadn't considered. It was also terrific to read Saunders' approach to character, humour, and representation.

Overall, this was an excellent short story collection and a great sampling of one of today's most acclaimed authors. ...more

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Jul 23, 2018 Dave Schaafsma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, fiction-21st-century

“It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it”--Saunders

I know, I know, I should have been reading George Saunders for decades, but I just didn’t. Maybe a couple stories here and there. Oh, and his commencement address on kindness. Then I read Lincoln in the Bardo and loved it. That combination of experimental fiction and unexpected, down to earth warmth. So I finally read Tenth of December, his 2013 collection of s ...more

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Jun 18, 2016 Karl rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“The Tenth of December” by George Saunders was published in 2013 to quite a bit of fanfare. After reading the book of stories now I understand why all the noise and fuss. In fact the book was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review. This is a sound reason to avoid a book.

I would normally shy away from this kind of book, which I did, until someone convinced me to read "The Tenth of December" which consists of the following stories:

003 -“Victor ...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Greg rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

Three stars???

You gave the Adam Levin short story collection five stars, and this three stars?

Yeah.

Someone could probably successfully argue me out of this opinion, but there was a feeling that too many of the stories in this collection were not substantial enough. Maybe it is that it has been so long since his last collection was released that I felt there should be something more here. I did like all of the stories, none of them were groan worthy but none of them really stood out either. Mayb Three stars???

You gave the Adam Levin short story collection five stars, and this three stars?

Yeah.

Someone could probably successfully argue me out of this opinion, but there was a feeling that too many of the stories in this collection were not substantial enough. Maybe it is that it has been so long since his last collection was released that I felt there should be something more here. I did like all of the stories, none of them were groan worthy but none of them really stood out either. Maybe I'll revise this opinion later when I find that some bit of one of the stories has planted itself in my brain and I find myself turning over memories of the story.

In case you don't read all my reviews let me say again, I hate reviewing short story collections. I'm also not really a fan of the short story. In musical terms too often they are like guitar solos, something that people with less philistine tastes than mine probably appreciate for their technical bravado, but which usually leave me feeling little for (although I can't think of any guitar solo that I like, or which I can say has 'rocked my world', the same can not be said of short stories. I do like quite a few of them, I know though that I've forgotten all the details about many many more of them then the ones that have left me with some residual mental reminder).

Reading George Saunders you get the feeling that he is a very humane person. He wants to see the world as good and he has actual compassion for people. Even when he's writing about degenerate white-trash there is a warmth to him. I almost wonder if he is like one of the characters in his first story, Alison Pope, whose thoughts ramble on how much she loves her town and people in her town, and in a high school ethics class poll, "voted for people being good and life being fun, with Mrs. Dees giving her a pitying glance as she stated her views: To do good, you just have to decide to do good. You have to be brave. You have to stand up for what's right. At that last, Mrs. Dees had made this kind of groan. Which was fine. Mrs. Dees had a lot of pain in her life, yet, interterestingly? Still obviously found something fun about life and good about people, because otherwise why sometimes stay up so late grading you come in next day all exhausted, blouse on backward, having messed it up in the early-morning dark, you dead discombobulated thing?" I get the feeling he would like to have this view of people, but then real life comes as the unexpected knock to the back door.

Delusions are present in almost all of the stories. The stories characters tell themselves in their heads, and the selves they create for themselves don't necessarily have anything to do with the way they really are. Other stories feature peoples inner selves being tweeked, modified or fucked up by fancy named pharmaceuticals. Violence runs through many of the stories, but it is rarely ever seen on the page. These are just a few themes I'm rambling off on.

The collection reminded me quite a bit of Hot Pink by Adam Levin. Probably taken as a whole the stories are better, but none of the stories really take off like Levin's did in his handful of spectacular pieces. In reality both books probably deserve four stars, but for my own reasons one gets bumped up and the other down. Maybe it's that as a first collection Levin's was really good, and for Saunders I'm kind of hoping that he'll do something more, my expectations are higher. Not that the stories are bad or anything, they are good, but they always feel like a George Saunders story, which is a compliment when applied to other writers but I'm kind of hoping to see something more from him. It would seem that some of the younger writers out there are quite possibly working his terrain in ways that are a bit more satisfying than he's doing it himself. ...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Trish rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, fiction, funny, favorite, literature, short-stories

It is quite something to come across a writer of versatility and skill who doesn’t figure (now that they have your ear—you bought the book, didn’t you?) they will add more than they need just because they can. This is a slim volume of stories that all of us should have--to read, to cherish, and to share. Saunders has a distinct voice that reveals us as we are now. We may say that his stories do not have the language of the old masters, but they have the language we use, with more kindness, gener It is quite something to come across a writer of versatility and skill who doesn’t figure (now that they have your ear—you bought the book, didn’t you?) they will add more than they need just because they can. This is a slim volume of stories that all of us should have--to read, to cherish, and to share. Saunders has a distinct voice that reveals us as we are now. We may say that his stories do not have the language of the old masters, but they have the language we use, with more kindness, generosity of spirit, and humor mixed in than most of us can rustle up on an ordinary day.

In the “Afterword” to Although Of Course You End up Becoming Yourself, an extended interview with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky writing for Rolling Stone magazine, Lipsky says of Wallace’s style that he wrote “the stuff you semi-thought, the background action you blinked through at supermarkets and commutes.” You heard it, you know it, but it doesn’t register enough for you to articulate and consider. Wallace was able to do that, and Saunders does it also. He reaches in and gets that real thing that you discarded, shines it, and shows you how it defines us.

If I could ask him, I would ask Saunders how he chose which stories to include in this volume. He spans the range of us, starting out in the mind of suburban teenagers looking at each other with longing or appraisal ("Victory Lap"), and ends with a gentleman of great age descending the staircase of dementia to his grave ("Tenth of December"). In between we catch glimpses of ourselves as returning soldiers filled with anger and hope ("Home"), twenty-somethings undergoing moral and medical testing ("Escape from Spiderhead"), and middle-aged parents aching to give their children more than they themselves had growing up ("The Semplica Girl Diaries").

Saunders is funny, kind, precise with his sword-thrusts which reach the heart but do not kill. I do not think we need ask “where do you get your inspiration?” since echoes of Mao Zedong ring through "Exhortation", and we also know the zany neighbor in "Sticks", or can imagine the source of the internal dialogue in "My Chivalric Fiasco". These people are us, and he treats us gently and allows us to laugh, with regret sometimes, with recognition at other times. But he doesn’t laugh at us and we don’t laugh with cynicism. We are grateful to Saunders because, despite his pointing out our failings and our shortcomings, we can sense he still likes us, and even celebrates our efforts in trying to make sense of, and make our way in, this crazy world.

I have too many favorite bits to single one out. But perhaps after all, my favorite bit is the fact that he doesn’t use too many words. It is honed and toned and polished and clear and gets to the heart of the matter. It isn’t a long book, so you can easily find your own favorite bit. It’s all good. Go out and buy it. This is one you will want to reread: you will read it when you are happy, and you will read it when you are sad, you will read to see how he did that.
...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Elyse Walters rated it liked it · review of another edition

Generally ---this is not my type of book. I wanted to read it (expand my view --see if maybe I've 'matured' in taste) --
Overall I had a few laughs -- most of the stories were dark --(I found hard to find funny) --and I don't think I've matured at all.

My mind drifted - (I had to 'work' to bring it back)--
Its seems there was less character storytelling & character development than storytelling of ideas.

I still give the book a 3 (not less) --for the pure artistry I observed from the author.

...more

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Dec 10, 2014 Melki rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story-collections

Saunders is a master at taking the ordinary, the usual, the hum-drum and tossing in a bit of bizarro (okay...in some cases, it's a whole lot of bizarro!) to mess with the proceedings. Not every one of these stories hit the jackpot with me, but the ones that did were right on the money.

And, yes, I did wait until today, December 10th to read the title story.

Sometimes I'm so cute I make myself sick. ...more

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Jan 16, 2013 meeners rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, contemporary-fiction

when did george saunders become so well known? i don't mean that to sound snarky - i am honestly astonished (and delighted) by the lavish attention tenth of december has been getting. i count george saunders high on my list of favorite living authors, but for the longest time i labored under the apparently woefully misguided assumption that he was unjustly unknown and unfeted (despite his regular appearances in the new yorker et al.). i was all set to write a magnum opus of a goodreads review in when did george saunders become so well known? i don't mean that to sound snarky - i am honestly astonished (and delighted) by the lavish attention tenth of december has been getting. i count george saunders high on my list of favorite living authors, but for the longest time i labored under the apparently woefully misguided assumption that he was unjustly unknown and unfeted (despite his regular appearances in the new yorker et al.). i was all set to write a magnum opus of a goodreads review in order to lift him out of the literary genteel poverty (i assumed) he was languishing in, only to find out that places like the new york times magazine have been feting him all along.

then again, there are pieces like this one that seem to suggest that a lot of the hype is rather self-contained and perhaps smacking a bit of snobbery. i dunno. he is worth the hype, though. that i do know. apologies for the constant linking, but in reading this latest collection i kept thinking of this article and the really astute and compassionate way it talks about disaster in relation to social difference. as the author points out, people often think of disasters as flattening out landscapes, but in fact what they also do is deepen and reinforce existing inequalities (of class, gender, race, place). i've realized this is why i react with such immediate loathing when confronted with the superflat art of murakami takashi, to give just one example. his superflat art presents a slick world of utter surface in which we (as global consumers) are supposedly all on the same plane. but we're not. as george saunders shows, we are positioned in a vastly uneven landscape in which only those at the top can live in a superflat world as if nothing was at stake. but that's only a trick of perspective, as evidenced by all those left gazing up from the ruts and grooves made invisible by it. everything is at stake.

a lot of the stories in this collection feature characters from both ends of the chasm brought unexpectedly together, with bizarrely surreal and melancholic and yet also simply really funny results. but what i love about george saunders (and this is true of many things i love) is that, while he deals with a lot of topics that can easily invoke cynicism and a certain kind of literary conceit (not to mention any names JEFFREY EUGENIDES), he himself is never, ever cynical. i can't even begin to do this book the justice it deserves. stories like "tenth of december" punch me in the gut, they leave me speechless and just...feeling like the world has opened up again, or like i've been plunged into the chasm, or like i've spent all day beating my fists against invisible walls that suddenly swing away and next i know i'm leaping into the sky. ah, hell. it's impossible to describe the effect of these stories. just read them. they are truly marvelous.
...more

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May 08, 2013 Leonard rated it did not like it · review of another edition

When this book was released in January of this year I heard that one reviewer proclaimed it the "best book of the year." I guess there's some wisdom in some circumstances to not have very high expectations, like when anticipating the accomplishments of the latest election winnners, but certainly the contemporary publishing industry in this country and world is still turning out enough remarkable writing, that we can at least be hopeful throughout the year.

Unfortunately this is not one of those ...more

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Feb 19, 2014 Glenn Sumi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

Urgent, humane and deeply felt short stories by an absolute master of the form.

Saunders’s voice is distinct, dark and confident, and he’s got a remarkable ability to set up narratives – some featuring dystopic settings – efficiently and with a minimum of fuss.

The theme of chivalry and rescue runs through many of these stories, from the bravura opening story (“Victory Lap”) about an abduction attempt – told in three distinct voices – to the final two, one a tragicomic tale about a man trying to d ...more

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Feb 18, 2018 Cheryl rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 10-short-stories, new-york-times-10-best-books-2013, national-book-award

"A feat of inventiveness... This eclectic collection delights with its at times absurd, surreal, and darkly humorous look at very serious subjects." Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner

These short stories may strike some readers as familiar tales, but Saunder's craft, honesty and focus on humanity separates them from other writers telling similar stories. At the core, according to the author, is a focus on the least understood condition of humans, our ending - death. And with that in mind, ...more

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Jan 06, 2020 Hugh rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2020, modern-lit

My only previous experience of reading Saunders was his Booker winner Lincoln in the Bardo, which I admired but found it hard to love. I have heard so many good things about his stories that I felt I should read some, but once again the weight of expectation made it hard for me to appreciate these at face value.

My main problem is that much of this is a little too showy for my taste. Saunders is undoubtedly able to capture a wide range of voices, and there is plenty of surreal black humour and sa ...more

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May 12, 2018 Sam Quixote rated it liked it

George Saunders’ short stories are an amazing blend of Donald Barthelme’s abstract weirdness and David Sedaris’ humour, and his collections - in particular Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Pastoralia - tend to be really good. Though it seemed that for every story I liked in Tenth of December there was a story I didn’t, so this one wasn’t as great as I’d hoped.

The book starts promisingly with the excellent Victory Lap about a Rod/Todd Flanders-type kid who saves his neighbour/high-school crush fr George Saunders’ short stories are an amazing blend of Donald Barthelme’s abstract weirdness and David Sedaris’ humour, and his collections - in particular Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Pastoralia - tend to be really good. Though it seemed that for every story I liked in Tenth of December there was a story I didn’t, so this one wasn’t as great as I’d hoped.

The book starts promisingly with the excellent Victory Lap about a Rod/Todd Flanders-type kid who saves his neighbour/high-school crush from abduction by a psycho. Escape from Spiderhead is a brilliant mix of comedy and horror set in a dystopian future where prisoners are experimented on by pharmaceutical companies in exchange for shorter sentences.

Al Roosten is an amusing tale of an eccentric in a small town, living his life behind a mask and somewhat deluded and bitter about life in general. My Chivalric Fiasco is a funny story of an idiot who takes some pills and gets super-into his renaissance fair role.

At his best, Saunders inhabits the heads of his characters so convincingly, creating unique voices and personalities for each one. The kid in Victory Lap is vastly different from Al Roosten who is totally separate from the convict in Spiderhead. That range, skill and imagination is a helluva talent to have and definitely noticeable when reading one story after another like this.

Home, about a soldier back from war whose family is a wreck, was well-written and intermittently interesting but less pointed and memorable than the better stories. The same goes for Puppy and Exhortation, both of which are mundane critiques on Western society. Sticks is a one page story but is quite moving with Saunders impressively cramming a man’s life into such a short space, highlighting his changing priorities and perspectives over time.

The two worst stories are unfortunately two of the longest. The Semplica Girl Diaries is a dull satire on Western materialism and the dichotomy between the rich West and poor third world countries. It’s also written in this incredibly irritating abbreviated style by a character who’s obviously not meant to be a capable writer and is rushing to put down his banal thoughts in some bizarre and ill-conceived attempt at posterity. This how reads sentences. Pages and pages style like this - awkward, yes, and doesn’t get better. Could barely read more than handful pages at time. V. flat and clunky msg. too. Grr.

The title story is also intentionally written in an awkward way. One of the narrators is a man suffering from brain cancer who decides to kill himself rather than become a burden to his family but ends up saving a kid instead. The story is confusing to read to be reflective of the horrible disease, which is clever but not at all enjoyable and felt very self-consciously literary. The kid’s perspective didn’t really add anything either.

There are definitely some hilarious and entertaining gems to be found in Tenth of December but if you’re looking for the best George Saunders collections I’d rec either Civilwarland or Pastoralia instead. ...more

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Dec 28, 2018 Trudie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories-novella, best-of-2018

I seem to be approaching George Saunders work in reverse chronological order. Of course I had heard of Saunders before his Booker winner debut novel Lincoln in the Bardo , I was aware he was a short story writer of some repute. However, for some reason I thought this book was going to be full of beautifully written yet ultimately dull "slice of life" affairs.
How wrong I was ! This collection is a quirky oddball masterpiece. All of Saunders ribald and linguistic inventiveness that I admired in ...more

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May 25, 2016 Tatiana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Tatiana by: Catie

Shelves: short-stories, 2016, national-book-award

Catie told me that some stories reminded her of Black Mirror, and they do. What she didn't mention is that Saunders is quite funny. Hapless, kind-hearted underachievers seem to be his specialty.

A rare short story collection that held my attention all the way through. ...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Rob rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: recommended-by-friends, modern-lit, short-stories

I wanted to like this one more than I did. I had never heard of the author until a friend recommended him; I then found his name popping up a lot as I read this collection. Saunders is a current literary darling, specializing in short stories, and has been generally very well-received.

Tenth of December is a collection of ten short stories. Length varies dramatically, from a couple of pages to much longer. Saunders has been praised for his style; initially I took it to be a conceit of one of his ...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Brad Cotton rated it did not like it · review of another edition

What. The. F#@K?
I just read a lot of other reviews on here because I thought, ya know, maybe I just don't get it. Well, yeah, I guess I just don't get it. I have a genuine inclination that some of the 4 and 5 star reviews are from folks that are afraid to admit that they didn't get it either... but I could be wrong about that. The writing style confused me - as if I was playing a guessing game with Saunders' stream of thought as it jumped around from place to place. Certain sentences seemed like ...more

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Feb 14, 2013 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, aere-perennius

I'm late to the George Saunders fan club, but Tenth of December was amazing. Belongs on the same shelf as Pynchon, McCarthy and DFW in the pantheon of amazing American writers. He has a voice that captures the depth and vibrations of America's modern tragicomedy. He dances on the same ground as David Foster Wallace. The sophistication of his prose is amazing. He writes on a tightrope of madness and morality. There were a couple stories that were objectively only four stars, but emotionally, I wa ...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Jenne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiftyfifty-me-2013, short-stories

Me: Okay but I don't...like...short stories. Like at all.

Book: Dude that is totally fine but just read like the first one.

Me: fine

Book: I STAB you in the face with my awesome!!

Me: ..!

Book: MY WORDS ARE LITERALLY TOUCHING YOUR BRAIN

Me: FUCK YES

Book: How about this last story?!

Me: shh I am having feelings ...more

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Feb 15, 2021 Spencer Orey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

Wow.

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Mar 01, 2014 Jr Bacdayan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There are small cracks in life which go unnoticed or avoided by the general lot of humanity. Little crevices that are perfect mixtures of bliss and sorrow, wunderkinds that jolt one into a sense of appreciation, bewilderment, wonder at this thing called life. George Saunders’ collection of stories delves into these wells to produce emotions from the very depths of being. His stories show the good in places where we fail to find it, stories of compassion to people who we condemn, stories of the u ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Goodreads România: Citește cu mine: Zece Decembrie, de George Saunders (4⭐ din 5 ✔)	28	84	Mar 17, 2020 09:51AM
Goodreads România: Nominalizări pentru cartea lunii decembrie 2019	27	71	Nov 26, 2019 11:22PM
The Blender Book ...: July 2019 - Tenth of December	19	9	Jul 23, 2019 12:46PM
Play Book Tag: Tenth of December - George Saunders - 4 stars	1	17	Jan 12, 2018 03:19AM
Play Book Tag: Tenth of December/Saunders - 4 stars (almost 5)	6	27	Sep 28, 2016 11:02AM

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About George Saunders

George Saunders

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George Saunders was born December 2, 1958 and raised on the south side of Chicago. In 1981 he received a B.S. in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He worked at Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, NY as a technical writer and geophysical engineer from 1989 to 1996. He has also worked in Sumatra on an oil exploration geophysi ...more