One of this year's best books and worth checking out if you like unusual and well-crafted short stories. Jennie and I have a rundown of all the stories on Dear Author. Here's an excerpt from our review:

Jennie: When Janine suggested reviewing this collection of short stories together, I was only vaguely familiar with the author. I remembered that Janine had mentioned him in our joint review of How High We Go in the Dark, and indicated that Saunders was known for literary fabulism. It was only after I looked the author up that I realized he was the author of Lincoln in the Bardo, a novel I’ve heard a bit about, though I haven’t read it.

Janine: He is. Sirius and I have been planning a review of his nonfiction book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life for ages and I still want to get to it, so if anyone here is interested in Saunders, keep an eye out for it.

I said that literary fabulism was George Saunders’s purview but most of the stories in Liberation Day didn’t read like examples of literary fabulism to me. I don’t think all of the stories in his first two anthologies, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Pastoralia (I still haven’t gotten to the third, The Tenth of December) did either but a higher percentage of them might have.

I would only characterize two or of the nine stories definitively as such. “Ghoul,” where the situation in which the narrator finds himself is absurd and takes place in a surreal environment, under circumstances that remain inexplicable even at the end. “Liberation Day,” the titular novella, can be considered a literary fable too.

Two more are maybes. In “Mother’s Day” the penultimate scene is surreal and it’s not 100% clear what it signifies. But that one is really a genre mashup, since up until that scene everything makes sense and takes place in a real-world context. If I squint, I might consider applying that label to “My House,” too, but it could easily be considered contemporary literary fiction. While the things that happen in it aren’t out of possibility, one character’s expectations and reactions are out there.

“The Mom of Bold Action,” “A Thing at Work,” and “Sparrow,” are also contemporary literary short stories IMO. I would describe “Love Letter” and “Elliott Spencer” as dystopian shorts.

Jennie: I think that’s an accurate run-down, though I found “Elliott Spencer” to be a bit surreal in some of the details.

Reading the first story in this collection, “Liberation Day”, started as a disorienting experience. The titular story opens:

"It is the third day of Interim.

A rather long Interim, for us.

All day we wonder: When will Mr. U. return? To Podium? Are the Untermeyers (Mr. U, Mrs. U, adult son Mike) pleased? If so, why? If not, why not? When next will we be asked to Speak? Of what, in what flavor?"

“Liberation Day” is the longest of the nine stories in this collection; it takes up fully 25% of the book. I was confused about what exactly was happening for what felt like a good part of it. The narrator, Jeremy, references “pinioning” and “Fahey cups” and many other things that I didn’t understand. The rather stilted language that Jeremy uses increased my sense of alienation.

What becomes clear (eventually) is that Jeremy, and two other people, Lauren and Craig, are slaves of a sort to the Untermeyer family. How they became slaves is not clear at first – Jeremy believes he was born four years before, but he’s a full-grown man. He does not remember any life before the room where he and the others are pinioned to a wall for the vast majority of their time, occasionally let down to stretch and change the position of their pinioning, as directed by Mr. Untermeyer.

The purpose of their service is a bizarre form of entertainment that Mr. Untermeyer invites his friends and neighbors to witness. Through information they are given by the apparatuses they are attached to, the trio declaim on various subjects in a theatrical manner. (The process seems seamless, as if Jeremy et al. are computers that the information is downloaded to.) The performances seem to be intended to both entertain and inform.

Janine: In addition, a lonely Mrs. Untermeyer has Jeremy passionately recite heated words to her while her husband and son are asleep. Jeremy thinks he is in love with her and wants to please her, but his childlike innocence and the power gap between them are such that this feels like abuse even though Jeremy looks forward to it.

Jennie: Exactly. I really felt for Jeremy there.

The first performance the reader views bores the audience, leading Mr. Untermeyer to employ “singers” as well; he seems somewhat desperate to impress. The speakers and singers put on a performance depicting Custer’s Last Stand, from both the points of view of the whites and the Native Americans. The performance is going much better than the previous one when it’s interrupted unexpectedly, leading to revelations and choices for Jeremy.

This story, and in fact most stories in the collection, invoked strong feelings in me, not always positive. I found myself frustrated to the point of being angry about various things: my confusion, Jeremy’s cheerful obtuseness, the benign malignity of Mr. U’s audience.

I think “Liberation Day” is intended to evoke anger, confusion and distress, and it did that. It wasn’t the last story that had that effect.

Janine: That’s interesting. I agree about confusion and distress, but I didn’t feel anger. I was disoriented to start with but I caught on probably 20% in and developed sympathy for Jeremy’s vulnerability and helplessness. He couldn’t do much about his obtuseness; it was a thing that had been done to him. That was upsetting to read. I zoned out a bit for some of the declaiming but I liked how Saunders ultimately threaded together the themes of the Custer’s Last Stand performance with what was taking place in the novella and in Jeremy’s life.

Jennie: There were obvious and poignant parallels between Jeremy and the last character he plays, that of an Army Lieutenant who gets away from the massacre but then makes a seemingly inexplicable choice. I really felt that the entire performance within the story was masterfully done and oddly moving (I say oddly because I generally don’t have a lot of sympathy for Custer et al. but I ended up feeling for all of the characters in the story-within-the-story).

Janine: The ending of this novella made it (for me) the saddest in the collection. It made me think of Daniel Keyes’ famous story “Flowers for Algernon.” Thankfully it didn’t break my heart to quite the same degree. This one was a B+ for me.

The next story, “The Mom of Bold Action,” was probably my least favorite. The narrator is a writer (and not a very good one) attempting to come up with a good concept for a story while at the same time focusing obsessively on the dangers to her young son who has a dangerous lung-related illness. She frets and panics over anything that might happen to him. When he comes home with scratches on his face and says an old guy pushed him down, she and her husband immediately call the police. After two suspects are apprehended and the boy can’t identify the culprit, her sense of futility and frustration goad her into escalating the violence.

This was an unsettling story.

You can find our thoughts on all the stories here: https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/overall-b-reviews/b-plus-reviews/joint-review-liberation-day-by-george-saunders/

With his usual humor and surrealism, George Saunders returns to the short-story form with this amazing collection. These ten stories are trademark Saunders--surreal, quirky, and fun--but, most importantly, they comment on larger, more profound societal and political issues with astute precision.

I both read and listened to parts of this book, which was enjoyable, especially since many of the stories are narrated by celebrities, including Jack Brayer ("Ghouls"), Melora Hardin ("Mother's Day"), and Tina Fey ("The Bold Mom of Action.". The title story, "Liberation Day," is read by Saunders himself and is the longest story in the collection. In it, people, who come on hard times, can "apply" to be props in rich people's live performances. The "Speakers" literally have their memories wiped out, are restrained against the wall on a stage, and must perform for a person who has the means to pay their families for the ownership. In this case, a trio are performing Custer's Last Stand for Mr. U. and his rich friends. While the main mind-wiped Speaker considers it an honor to do this work, he doesn't remember his family (who are being paid by Mr. U.); he thinks he's in love with Mrs. U, who is molesting him; and he's upset when Mr. U's son Mike brings in a Resistance group intent on taking this indecency down. While funny and action-packed, the whole idea of this seems far-fetched--until you remember how far people will go to survive in today's world, how some are forced to be degraded or harmed just to survive.

All of the pieces in this thought-provoking collection have the same undercurrent. In "Ghoul," Mike, a performer in a twisted theme park called Maws of Hell, is part of a hierarchical and dangerous livelihood where performers are killed if they say out loud that they realize their park never gets any visitors. In "The Mom of Bold Action," a mom gets irrationally angry and vindictive when her son is pushed down by a mentally unstable man. Each story seems to have people made worse or harmed or controlled by a society that, as a whole, has forgotten how to be humane and decent. It's a society that dehumanizes out of selfishness, arrogance, and/or and societal class structures. Is Saunders commenting on where he sees today's America going?

If you're a Saunders's fan, you love this collection. And, if you've never read Saunders or just read his book, Lincoln in the Bardo, I highly suggest you give this collection a try and absolutely read Tenth of December. Both of these collections are filled with stories that will make you chuckle, amaze you with their surreal brilliance, and absolutely make you think and rethink issues that are prevalence in real-life today. Read this and see a short-story master give us readers brilliance to chew on.

Liberation Day is a weirdly unique collection of short stories. Most focus on morality and knowing right from wrong. Some are futuristic, some are about politics (both government and workplace), some are about love, and there are a couple that I wasn't entirely sure what they were about.

George Saunders is a creative genius. I'm just not always on his level, nor do I want to be.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

3.5, rounded up. This is not George Saunders's strongest collection of short stories, and it's certainly his most uneven in both tone and quality.

In the three longer stories-- the title story, "Ghoul," and "Elliott Spencer," I sensed creative exhaustion and crushing despair. Or more charitably, Saunders was following his standard recipe from earlier stories like "Escape from Spiderhead" and "CommComm": plunge a psychologically and/or neurologically and/or pharmacologically and/or linguistically damaged first-person narrator into a whacked-out high-concept dystopian scenario that parodies neoliberal corporate wage slavery. Reading these, I realized that the concentrated insanity of the real world has overtaken the concentrated fictional insanity of Saunders-land.

Most of the other stories, like "The Mom of Bold Action," "A Thing at Work," "Mother's Day," and "My House" are inner soliloquies of contemporary Americans caught in spirals of narcissistic obsession, engaged in elaborate games of self-representation in which they are characterologically incapable of basic empathy. I found sentimentality creeping into "Love Letter," a mawkish confession from an old man who failed (just like everyone else) to stop America's slippery slope into fascism.

I am a longtime Saunders fan, and rate Lincoln in the Bardo as a contender for Great American Novel of the 21st Century. But I would have enjoyed reading these individually, spread out over a year, rather than over three or four evenings.

Such a strange collection of stories! Many of the stories involve characters that are not quite human. Reading them makes me question my own humanity.

I was pleasantly surprised by this assortment of short stories. The story about Brenda was laugh out loud funny. I also really enjoyed the grandfather’s letter and the titular piece. Saunders has shown his range and depth with these seemingly disconnected pieces.

George Saunders is one of those few writers that I will instantly preorder/reserve, without waiting for reviews. Liberation Day is his first short fiction collection since the publication of his Booker Prize-winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, in 2017. I loved LittB and I think 10th of December is one of the most brilliant collections I've ever read, so I was looking forward to this one. Liberation Day was worth the wait - it felt more pointedly political than his past work and I appreciated that. His characters' internal monologues crackle and burn, as ever. Can't wait to read what he writes next.

Extraordinarily witty, creative, and highly empathetic, Saunders doesn't disappoint with this collection of nine short stories. It's a little unfair of me, but basically on the star rating front, I compare him to himself and find that this collection wasn't quite as compelling for me as Tenth of December, but I still LOVED a lot of these stories.

Liberation Day, Ghoul, and Elliott Spencer were similar in their approach. Each took place in a futuristic world where those in power hid the truth from certain segments of the population and used their power to manipulate people for their own ends. On some level, these three stories felt like re-workings of the same idea. They all worked very well, but Ghoul was my personal favorite of the three because the main character was so sympathetic.

The other two stories I really liked dealt with the topic of revenge - The Mom of Bold Action (a mom taking revenge on behalf of her son) and A Thing at Work (two employees escalate an unfortunate work situation).

For me, the least successful story was Love Letter which is essentially short form political commentary written in the form of a letter from a grandfather to a grandson. It lacked Saunders' trademark wit and didn't quite have the forward momentum of most of the other stories.

All in all though, Liberation Day just leaves me wanting more, more, more. I will eagerly await the next story collection from this astounding author.

Do you ever wake at night and reflect on situations in your life and regret your actions? Or maybe, your lack of action? Have you gone over and over these incidents wishing you could go back and make things right or, barring that, just forget them altogether?

Reading George Saunder’s newest collection of stories, Liberation Day, made me think of all of those things.

In some of the stories in Liberation Day, characters live in a disturbing future where minds are wiped clean, and the notion of enslavement has taken a technological turn, often for the entertainment of those in control.

In other stories, set in our present time, they live in small towns, working in offices, and making absolutely dreadful choices in their daily lives; they are unkind, self-serving, unethical. They, as the axiom about comedy goes, punch down rather than up.

Overall, the world in Liberation Day, both present and future, is one where we’ve ceased to value each other, from not treating each other with grace to issues of life and death.

Saunders seems fascinated by issues of class and gender. At times his depictions of women grated seeming like unkindly caricatures, but I don’t doubt that was the point. Through his characters, Saunders surfaces prejudices about class and wealth and education and makes us look at them.

Having adored Lincoln in the Bardo, devoured A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, and now flown through Liberation Day, I’m eager to read more of Saunders’s work. If you like your short stories absurd and troubling with a deep dive into ethics and morality (and a side of humour), then Liberation Day fills the bill.

I really did not expect this be a 4 star review but yet another shout-it-from-the-rooftop classic from Mr. Saunders. Unfortunately, while it is still overwhelmingly good, a few quibbles did arise. First, I do believe his future/near-future dystopia often lead to his best work, but it felt like by the time we got to the third or fourth one of these, that we had had enough . Of the 9 stories, I think the majority were successful, but it was not all 9 hitting those heights. His worldview of compassion and acceptance and togetherness does shine through, bringing a lot of heart to this collection.

George Saunders does it again with this collection of short stories. Where does he come up with these ideas, these situations, these crazy worlds? Each is unique, some firmly in the sci-fi realm, others anchored in the absurdity and pettiness of every day life.

"She could do more good in the world by, like, baking." I don't why but this line cracked me up. There are a lot of lines like these.

He gets right in his characters' weird heads: "Worked dumb jobs and had never married and were always talking about their feelings."

Saunders has a way of introducing the characters as "good" or "bad" then digs in deeper, making those distinctions less clear, characters flipping between hero and villain. And back again.

"Sometimes in life the foundation upon which one stands will give a tilt, and everything one has previously believed and held dear will begin sliding about, and suddenly all things will seem strange and new."

Did I mention that the stories are bizarre? A lot of these stories are bizarre. And weird, dystopian, timely.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As usual with George Saunders, his short stories provide insight into themes that we are all facing in today's society. These stories provoke deep thinking over the ideas that they raise within a brief piece of literature. There is a lot of insight and clear observations of the world. Some of the stories hit home more for me than others, but as a collection, this one is nicely constructed.
For lovers of short stories, this one is for you.
#LiberationDay #NetGalley #RandomHousePublishing Group

I love the sound of Nick Offerman reading a story. After you initially acknowledge the obvious nature of that statement, you might pause and wonder what it has to do with *Liberation Day*...fair enough.

On a whim and with an Audible credit, a while back I purchased Saunders's *Lincoln in the Bardo* based mostly on Offerman being a narrator (and a bit on Saunders's rep). It was one of the best credits I had ever spent. I loved it. Then, I got Saunders's essay collection on Russian literature. I liked it even more. I had not even tried my hand at Saunders's shorts, which is where he shines brightest, and I was already enamored with his work.

So, when I saw that a short story collection was coming out, it was an easy preorder. And it is an easy 5* and, at least a couple of the stories will be multiple rereads. Saunders is the type of author that makes you want to be an author and simultaneously makes you lament the fact that, if he is what qualifies as an author, you probably will never be an author. The plots are interesting, but the prose is superb. I have heard him referred to as the best short story writer working and, while admittedly falling a bit short of reading every other short story writer alive, I would be surprised if his rep of utter supremacy is overblown. All of these stories are either very good or great, and I have a new author who has earned his way into my absolute favorites.

Oh, and Melora Hardin's narration is freaking perfect. Perfect.

Great collection.

I love the clarity of George Saunder's voice, the way his characters engage in flawed empathy and self-reflection. I want to sit with it longer, but I know it's something I can wholeheartedly recommend both to fans of his and new readers who come into the store!

George Saunders bends literary barriers and pushes reality with a series of imaginative stories. Taking the reader to the edge of what is familiar, then with a few well placed verbs and adjectives, kicking us over into the unexplored. Saunders grounds each tale in the every day, and with real human emotion. The first story in this collection sets a precedent of language, history, and fantasy that will charm loyal fans and new readers of Saunders alike.

When I first pick up a George Saunders book I find myself a little disoriented… but I invest a little trust, a little patience, and the payoff is well worth it. In his Booker Award winning novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” I stopped short and started up again, not sure I was following things. Once I got the hang of it I was amazed– it is one of my favorite books. In “Tenth of December,” an earlier collection of his, it was jarring to finish one story and then transition into a completely different world, with dissimilar voices and alternate versions of reality. This can be true of any anthology, of course, but Saunders’ selections are so diverse and independent of one another.

“Liberation Day: Stories” is his latest collection. He once again shows why many consider him to be the finest short story writer practicing today. The imagination, creativity and dark humor are driving while questions are posed about our behavior. Personal freedoms are looked at in stories such as “Liberation Day,” where three characters are attached to a wall and obligated to perform for a wealthy man and his friends. In “Elliot Spencer” we see a man being brainwashed and cleansed of his memory so that he may serve in the employ of a political group. “Ghoul” examines Hellish underground amusement park workers who may or may not have been told the truth about their fate. In Saunders’ most overtly political story, “Love Letter,” a elderly man explains to his son how democracy lost so many freedoms when it did not take “clownish leaders” seriously.

Not every story here is political or sci-fi / fantasy. In “Mom of Bold Action” we are in the mind of a mother out to seek vengeance for a relatively minor attack on her young son. She goads her husband into exacting retribution on a possible suspect. She feels bad about the consequences for the man in question… but her guilt has its limits. In “Mother’s Day” there is a showdown in a hailstorm between two women, long time rivals, who have only ever seen the other as undeserving of the man they both loved.

Every story here is a gem, every tale thought-provoking and entertaining. Highly recommended reading.

Thank you to Random House Publishing and NetGalley for providing the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #LiberationDay #NetGalley

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

In his latest short story collection, Liberation Day: Stories, George Saunders presents a series of stories which investigate what it is to be human in our troubling world, in the boxes society makes for us and that we maintain for ourselves.

If you like George Saunders, you’ll probably like this book. Each story, whether set in a strange world in which a faction of humans lives underground in perpetual performance for visitors who never come, or simply chronicling the interior thoughts of two women who loved the same man, seeks to crack open the humanity behind humans, for better and for worse. Each story is buoyed by one, two, or occasionally three strong perspectives, and a few play not only with story, but with form — an epistle for one, the broken sentences of a being just developing language for another. Coupled with Saunders’ startling mastery of the sentence, his unique descriptions, his joyful play with sounds and syntax, and this collection was everything I hoped it would be. Each piece had me curled up with my kindle, unable to look away, constantly reading aloud lines or summarizing whole scenes to whoever was around and willing to listen. As with any Saunders, I will likely be thinking of — and coming back to — these stories for a long time.

2.5 stars!
This short story collection follows dystopian tales, where people have lost their free will or are extremely dependent upon technology.

This is a very odd collection of short stories. Some of them left me scratching my head. I really liked the world building, as each story had a very particular setting. There was lots of commentary on society and the evolution of technology. I found it to be philosophical in some parts. But overall, the majority of the stories were just too strange. I found the writing style difficult to connect with.

George Saunders is undoubtedly one of the best short story writers of our day, and so when I saw that he had a new collection coming out, I couldn’t let it pass me by. Thank goodness I didn’t! It’s just as good as we expected it to be (and maybe more).

All nine stories here are deeply human and fun to read, even when the topics are heavy. They’re also imaginative, sometimes dipping a pinky toe into sci-fi in the best way (the title story is about a man, pinned up on a wall and fed lines as entertainment for guests, who falls in love with his “owner’s” wife). They ask us: what is our reality? What is our responsibility inside that reality? What is the true self? Is control over others ever ethical? What does it mean to have hope in defiance of the world around us?

One other thing I loved was that a few of these stories played with multiple narrators, which you so rarely see in short fiction. But George and his incredible character and voice work pulls it off and then some, spinning us to greater depth and unfolding the plot like a puzzle.

Finally, let me implore you to please listen to the audiobook WHILE you read along with the print copy! Like with Lincoln in the Bardo, the cast of narrators is too good to miss (I especially loved Tina Fey’s performance of the second story), but there are some (especially the first and eighth stories) that will be hard to follow on audio alone. BOTH is the way to go, just trust me!



CONTENT AND TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Gun violence; Physical violence; Infidelity; Fatphobia (minor); Alcoholism (minor); Police brutality (minor)

I received an eARC from Random House via NetGalley.

4.5/5 stars. These stories will make you cry, make you laugh out loud, and make your jaw drop in horror; sometimes that all will happen in one story! How does George Saunders come up with his ideas? It’s amazing the way he can take the odd foibles of suburban-American life and twist it into a dystopian nightmare. He can make you feel so emotionally connected to a character in only a few pages. He is truly a masterful storyteller. My favorite stories were The Mom of Bold Action and Love Letter.