Tenth of December by George Saunders Review

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.