NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "One of our most inventive purveyors of
the form returns with pitch-perfect, genre-bending stories that stare
into the abyss of our national character. . . . An exquisite work from a
writer whose reach is galactic."--Oprah Daily
Booker Prize winner George Saunders returns with his first collection
of short stories since the New York Times bestseller Tenth of
December.
**
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The
New Yorker, Oprah Daily, NPR, Time, USA Today, The Guardian, Esquire,
Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal**
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 exquisitely tuned--Saunders continues to challenge
and surprise: Here is a collection of prismatic, 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, all
too believable) future, that reminds us of our obligations to our
ideals, ourselves, and one another. "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. 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. And "My House"--in a
mere seven pages--comes to terms with the haunting nature of unfulfilled
dreams and the inevitability of decay.
Together, these nine subversive, profound, and essential stories
coalesce into a case for viewing the world with the same generosity and
clear-eyed attention Saunders does, even in the most absurd of
circumstances.
