George Saunders is a brilliant short story writer but he’s also capable of writing some absolute drek - unfortunately, Liberation Day is down there with the likes of The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil and Fox 8 as among his most dire work. What’s worse is that the garbage is unrelenting - there’s no story here that’s even half decent!
The titular story is one of the horrendous and opens the collection - at least it sets the tone of awfulness that’s to come! It’s barely comprehensible - a feature that’s applicable to the majority of the stories here. Something about robots or AI performing historical re-enactments and it’s somehow a commentary on social media…? No idea.
I tried reading Fox 8 a few years ago and couldn’t do it. It’s written in the first person (animal?) of a fox narrating a story and it’s written in this twee, irritating style that’s completely unreadable. Saunders does the same thing with Liberation Day, doing some experimental drivel that only added to my confusion as a reader who didn’t know what was going on or why.
As bad as Liberation Day is, that’s nothing compared to the worst story here, Elliott Spencer, which takes the experimental narration to the next level of sheer frustration. Again, I had no idea what the story was about - I gather it’s about a person who’s become a robot or something because they donated their body to medical science…? This story is simply an exercise in patience. Hats off to you if you can make it through without getting a headache.
The other stories aren’t good but you at least know more or less what’s going on in them, even if you don’t care. The Mom of Bold Action is about a mom whose kid gets pushed by an elderly homeless and who decides to seek vengeance upon them - incompetently. A Thing At Work is a story of office politics and class injustice. My House is about a guy trying to buy a house from an old weirdo.
Some stories are so unremarkable, I wonder if they weren’t added to make up the page count more than anything. Love Letter is a tedious narrative about a dystopian future America. Sparrow is about a woman who falls for a man at the store she works at. Mother’s Day is about grown-up kids and their estranged, elderly parents. Ghoul is another dystopian future story about humanity living underground because climate change, I think? I got the sense that Saunders was trying to do more feeble commentary on social media (using the “correct” vocabulary, witch hunts, etc.).
This is one of the worst books I’ve read all year, and easily the worst short story collection by Saunders to date. The stories are a mix of unmemorable, vague or plain annoying fictions that were an unbelievably tedious trial to unrewardingly trudge through. A total waste of time - liberate yourself by never reading Liberation Day! George Saunders can write superb short stories and, if you’re interested in reading those, I recommend Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Pastoralia instead of this horrorshow of a book.
No comments:
Post a Comment