George Saunders

This short story collection has been on my TBR list since reading Saunders’ ‘A Swim in a Pond in the Rain’, a book which uses short stories by Russian masters to discuss the art of short fiction. Saunders teaches creative writing at Syracuse University and is himself a graduate of the program.

The stories in this collection all share the theme of the declining West, in a similar vein to Kurt Vonnegut’s near-memoir, ‘A Man Without a Country’, Saunders sets his stories in disturbing, dilapidated theme parks reminiscent of Westworld. There is also a supernatural twist as many of the characters commune freely with recently deceased beings that they knew in life.

Stand-out stories include: ‘The Wave Maker Faulters’, in which childish negligence results in a child fatality and consequential guilt and regret; ‘Isobel’ tells the story of a boneless girl’s father that will commit the cruellest of atrocities in order to protect his daughter; in ‘The 400lb CEO’ is a story with the message that for some, hope is a bad thing (the most Russian of the tales, complete with brutal realism and devoid of a happy ending); the brutal cynicism continues with ‘Mrs Schwarz and Down-Trodden Mary’ living inevitably miserable lives full of oppression. The final story is a novella about lack of empathy and respect for life, populated by affluent characters that chat inanely about celebs while the poverty-stricken underclass, desperate for work, are forced to prostitute themselves (as the least they will do) as they turn on each other in a bid to survive their bleak existence.

Throughout this unsettling novel, delivered in a punky and shocking style, I could see the realism of Steinbeck, the brutality of Palahniuk and the ever-more easy-to-imagine visions of Philip K. Dick’s science-fiction future that is increasingly moving closer and closer to a terrifying science-fact present.