Liberation Day: Stories
2022 • 257 pages
Ratings16
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings16
Average rating4.2
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 Yorker 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
Perspective is hard when we're immersed in chaos—that's why we go to therapy. What Saunders has done here is kind of like showing us our Selves, from an outside perspective, except he makes it feel recognizably personal, like he's writing from the inside. (I can't find the right words. If I could, I'd be a writer myself.)
Each story is unique and powerful. Different settings and voices, with common themes of consciousness, self-awareness, moral agency. Saunders does an exquisite job of depicting inner monologue, monkey mind, life on autopilot; and a painfully accurate job showing the rationalizations we make every day to protect ourselves from discomfort. The book does not feel Buddhist in any way, but I think its insight and kindness make it a book that only a Buddhist could write. Each story requires effort from the reader; some more, some less. They're worth it.
A lot of good stories, with the first few being the most powerful.
Not bad, but not his best. Some of these stories feel like (inferior, and wearier) variations of similar ideas already used in previous stories. I still feel like CivilWarLand and Pastoralia are his best overall collections – though “CommComm” remains, for me, the pinnacle “just read this one” story to see what a great Saunders story is: inventive and disorienting, wicked and sharply funny, but also deeply empathetic and ultimately profound.
