Tenth of December in Reading with Style

Sep 19, 2013 Penny (Literary Hoarders) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, essex-county-library, books-read-in-2013

I originally started Tenth of December in audio. After four stories of the same, monotonous tone of voice applied to every character, every story, my ears were screaming for it to stop. I quickly switched to the book version. Although the next story was read with the voice of Saunders in my head still, it wasn't as bad as the audio.

The first three stories had me nodding to myself, agreeing with the decision to read this collection.

Then "Escape from Spiderhead" began. I suffered considerably th ...more

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Sep 17, 2014 Kathleen (itpdx) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

This is an amazing collection of powerful short stories. The audio version is read by the author. Most of the stories are told as an inner dialogue and often there is a switch in points of view to other characters in the story. Saunders does this very effectively. The story moves forward. You see the scene from somewhere else.
In "Home" we see home and home town through the eyes of a returned veteran suffering from PTSD.
In "Victory Lap"' the POV shifts between a teen age boy, his teenage neighb ...more

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Feb 05, 2014 Joy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-star, 2014, sci-fi-fantasy-speculative, short-stories

Saunders's evocative storytelling shows the power of short stories. ...more

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Mar 19, 2014 Bucket rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary, life-and-death, reviewed, short-stories, dystopia, word-play, many-perspectives

I've read a bunch of George Saunders' stories before in the New Yorker, including several of these, so I knew he was an expert on the format, but I really enjoyed reading a group of his stories in a row and seeing the interplay and repetition of theme of style between them. Saunders focuses a lot on lower or working class people and families and their struggles to get ahead or to come to terms with their standing.

His characters are very ordinary, doing ordinary things and struggling with things I've read a bunch of George Saunders' stories before in the New Yorker, including several of these, so I knew he was an expert on the format, but I really enjoyed reading a group of his stories in a row and seeing the interplay and repetition of theme of style between them. Saunders focuses a lot on lower or working class people and families and their struggles to get ahead or to come to terms with their standing.

His characters are very ordinary, doing ordinary things and struggling with things like body image, money problems, dead-end jobs, etc. Saunders adds an element of surprise and distance by placing the characters in a world slightly different from our own. I'll call it futuristic realism - it's sort of like magical realism, but it's something dystopian that could actually potentially happen down the line, not magic.

For example, in one story women from the third world avoid starvation and sex trafficking by agreeing to have a wire installed in their head so they can be hung in the yard of rich people by it as décor. Several stories feature descriptively-named drugs that cause temporary emotional or mental changes - such as making someone fall in love, or only speak the truth, or fall into a depression, or be very, very verbose. This futuristic realism offers tons of "what if" fun for both author and reader, as we can imagine ourselves in situations that no one has ever exactly been in before.

Another technique Saunders uses very well is multiple perspectives. Several stories feature characters experiencing the same situation and bringing different interpretations and assumptions to it. In Victory Lap, we hear from a kidnapped teen, the teen who saves her, and the kidnapper. In Puppy, we hear from two moms, both very good and loving but living in very different circumstances. In Tenth of December, we hear from a young boy and an old man, both struggling with how others see them and will see them in the future, and both almost freezing to death. This story offers a lovely sentiment, which closes the book:

"Why should those he loved not lift and bend and feed and wipe him, when he would gladly do the same for them? He'd been afraid to be lessened by the lifting and bending and feeding and wiping, and was still afraid of that, and yet, at the same time, now saw that there could still be many - many drops of goodness, is how it came to him - many drops of happy - of good fellowship - ahead, and those drops of fellowship were not - had never been - his to withheld. Withhold."

In his stories, Saunders subjects ordinary characters to futuristic-real traumas, some of which are downright terrifying and many of which are cruel and potentially deadly. But what he squeezes from these situations are drops of goodness in the ways that characters treat each other and put their value for humanity first. That's not to say every ending is happy - far from it. It's more that characters sacrifice for each other in bold, yet very human, ways.

In the back of my copy is a conversation between Saunders and David Sedaris. I pulled this little gem of a quotation from that:

"I have a feeling that things have always been pretty much the way they are now, with subtle variations. That is: The problems of being alive are intractable and don't vary in type from situation to situation, but maybe, some, in flavor and quantity. Ego is timeless; also hubris and loss and so on. In every time, people have been struggling with these things - the struggle Faulkner characterized as "the human heart in conflict with itself." I like the idea that a work of fiction is basically just some timeless human dilemma, dressed up in contemporary clothing."

Themes: short stories, class, aging, futuristic realism, dystopia light, multiple perspectives, trauma, mind/emotion-altering drugs ...more

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Nov 04, 2014 Joanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014-read, short-stories, rws-2014-fall

The author does a really nice job reading his own stories. He reads fairly fast - for many audiobooks I use the feature on my mp3 player to speed up the sound by about 20%, but I did not use that for this recording. These stories were fun, unusual, and thought-provoking. I hadn't read anything else by this author, or even really heard of him, before this collection was selected as a Group Read for a book challenge.

"Victory Lap" was a truly creepy and compelling story of an attempted kidnapping. ...more

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