This latest short story collection by George Saunders is a winner. I love his work-- the spot-on voicing of characters, his weird and captivating imagination, and the poignance of situation and perspective that can sneak up on you and deeply touch you. Many thanks to NetGalley for the privilege of reading this advance copy.

Saunders delivers more excellence, wit and smart satire in his latest collection. Some of these stories will be familiar to his readers in The New Yorker. My favorite stories are Elliott Spencer, The Mom of Bold Action, and My House. The title story felt similar to Elliott Spencer but less successful, perhaps because it was so drawn out. On the whole, mostly hits, a few misses, and very worth reading for satire lovers or readers and writers of short fiction.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for this advanced reader's edition in exchange for my honest feedback.

Opening a fresh new collection of George Saunders short stories is always a pleasure, even if the feelings dredged up in the reading of them are perhaps uncomfortable. Saunders is notably skilled at creating a world that looks and feels very much like our current reality, but with a speculative (and often dystopian) spin. His characters echo reality in the ways they feel adrift, lost in their own lives, and longing for connection or a chance to make something right that has gone horribly wrong. The stories in this collection uphold his reputation as the greatest living English-language short story writer.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book!

Wow! This was an amazing group of short stories to read. George Saunders is surely a true master of the form and this was an absolute delight to read. I truly felt that my reading experience was in the hands of a master.

This collection examines different areas of human nature from a variety of angles; from the quirky to the serious so many fascinating ideas are sketched out on the page. I will certainly be seeking out his past work with even more determination.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of this work for review.

After I read the first story, Liberation Day, I had to take some time off from reading the rest of the stories. It's the kind of story that has to sink in, a story that needs to be mulled over. It's also heartbreaking.

Most of the stories revolve around feeling trapped and/or oppressed. Sometimes trapped by society, trapped by poverty, trapped a character's own snobbishness. These tales do not have happy endings.

But this is what they have. The Liberation Day collection has some of the most beautiful, fantastical writing I've read. There is no doubt that George Saunders has a rare creativity.

These are stories that made me think about my own life, if I'm trapped, and what am I going to do about it?

They will not make you happy, but they will make you think.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for allowing me to read and review Liberation Day.

Is there anything better than a George Saunders short story? Of course not. I savored this one slowly over two weeks, reading a story and then stopping to think about it. My flat out favorite was Ghoul- I'll be rereading that one for years. But the one that literally stabbed me in the heart, and I cannot stop thinking about it is Love Letter. I found this collection soothing to my very anxious soul, and who has not gone through the roller coaster of emotions these past two years? Saunders has too, and it comes out in these stories. Just pure genius. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the early look. I will be ordering a finished copy to sit proudly on my shelf next to Tenth of December.

Four and a half stars

Saunders is, of course, a master of his craft. Some of these stories are so varied and use such unique language you'd think they were authored by different people. He frequently returns to the general theme of people being repurposed, so to speak--their memories wiped, making them into robot-like worker bees. The standout, for me, is "Elliot Spencer," which was published in The New Yorker in 2019. The way he uses the text to convey the acquisition of language in this story is masterful and makes me want to finally pick up The Tenth of December.

Has it really been 10 years since we had a George Saunders short story collection? It doesn't seem so to fans, as 5 of these stories appeared at intervals in the New Yorker, whetting our appetite for his unique, eloquently unsettling and often funny view of our life these days. His followers will want the book just because and new readers would do well to read a story at a time, pausing a day, a week, a month or more between .

George Saunders has been called the best short story writer working today, an accolade that is most backed up by this new collection. The first story, a piece about people whose brains have been erased and then forced to perform for wealthy audiences, is by the far the weakest -- the "what if robots are sentient" questions is well trod territory that never seems to get more interesting. Luckily, the book gets much better from there, "Ghoul" is perhaps the weirdest and strongest story, a mystery box of a piece that keeps unfolding and getting scarier. On the less metaphysical side, "My House" is a short and tragic piece about our attachment to our homes.

I’m a huge George Saunders fan. I think this book is very ambitious and it’s hard for me to review it. I need to re-read it and think about it more. I’ve never read anything quite like it and I think he’s one of the most important living writers.

I am a George Saunders superfan, have read all of his published work, sometimes more than once, subscribe to his Story Club substack, etc., so I was over the moon to get an early copy of his latest, but as much as it pains me to say it, this one is not my favorite of his story collections.

There's a weird sameness to some of these stories that hone in on his hyper-specific go-to tropes (basically down to MCs who have lost their agency in a very specific satirical funhouse version of late capitalism.). There are three stories out of the eight that basically amount to humans who are made into puppets in kind of satirical sci-fi ways.

That said, a less-great Saunders collection is still one of the best books I'll read this year, and no one NO ONE no one does the glimmers of humanity better and hope in desperate places than Saunders. There are scenes and images that will stick with me from these stories for sure, and I was deeply moved by many (particularly that last story -- whoa).

I do hope his next story collection comes soon, and offers more variety -- I adore George Saunders for the tropes that make him like no one else, but it sometimes feels in this collection like he's really resting on plots and ideas he's already extensively explored.

Liberation Day returns readers to the satirical realm of Saunders' just slightly absurd worlds and some of the stories touched on those in previous collections especially stories like the Semplica girl diaries and Pastoralia. Again, our heroes are the average person just trying to make their way, as best they can, despite the bizarre obstacles placed in their paths, and to try to understand the world, or the people in it, and to some degree make sense of it all. Readers will easily spot the ways Saunders is reflecting on our own reality and how, his speculative realms are all the more bizarre for how familiar they may be to readers. For fans of Saunders this is a must-read, and for those who haven't read his work before, this collection will be an introduction to a world that is more familiar than we'd want to admit.

Through the world of these speculative stories, George Saunders is able to speak about human nature and relationships. Each of these stories pointed to a deeper desire for connection. Saunders masterfully creates worlds for his complex characters and his prose suits the narrating character perfectly. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well-written literary fiction and speculative fiction.

I always start a book of Saunders and get so frustrated, not thinking I'll pick up the rhythm and am not sure this is really for me and I'm just not getting it because all of these smart people love him and how can I not? And then something clicks into place and it becomes extraordinarily delightful. This book is no different. I loved reading this book.

Perhaps this is a case of expectations being too high, but this collection was truly just OK for me. Tenth of December is the collection that made me love short stories. This collection feels as if Saunders has become derivative of himself. The stories don't feel fresh or funny. Maybe some of that is because some (Mom of Bold Action) already were published.

I really wanted to like these. Unfortunately, I found myself dreading picking up the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

While I thought this was an interesting collection of stories, overall it didn't really pull me in or captivate me. I felt like every time the story was getting good it was over- which is really just an issue between me and short stories in general.

There is a reason George Saunders is considered the greatest living American short story writer. Each story is an entire world, more vivid and complete than many novels five times the length. In this collection Saunders delves into themes of authoritarianism, dehumanization, rivalry, obedience, rebellion, and love. And with each one, we can’t help but ask: How did he come up with that? Because each story is completely original and utterly inventive. If I were to have one minor criticism, it is that for such a compact collection, some of the stories seem to tread similar ground:
Two about female rivalry, two about people whose memories are wiped so that they can be used as performative instruments. But that is minor compared to the strength of the collection overall. Ghoul for me is the standout, simultaneously moving and darkly hilarious.

Saunders has long been considered the American master of short stories and his new collection will certainly help augment and cement that legacy. I have read every one of his books and this one does not disappoint. It probably ranks a notch or two below 10th of December, which I think did not contain a single story that wasn't just about perfect, and is a masterpiece of the genre. Conversely, there are a couple misses in Liberation Day. But the stories that stand out really stand out. The first story, Liberation Day, from which the collection gets its title, is so incredibly unique and creative; a devastating rumination on class, memory, entertainment and what the future might hold. Saunders was first inspired to write stories by his love of Hemingway, and Liberation Day, among other stories, possesses a very Hemingway-esque, "iceberg" dynamic. Saunders does not explain or exposit in his stories, he uses all kinds of terms and concepts, completely new to the reader, used only by the characters inhabiting the world he creates. You just have to be patient and let Saunders work his magic. Saunders weaves worlds and words that are initially so confusing but organically illumined by the story, such that they completely make sense by the end. It is a joy to make that journey. I also loved the last story, a short one, called My House, which was just lovely. I don't want to spoil with any details. There are a couple stories where Saunders' politics are a little more overt than usual. Politics and social commentary are always a part of the subtext of Saunders' work, but they are always in the background and never diminish the natural progression of the stories. I think in a couple of the stories, written during the Trump years, he crossed the line from subversion into didactic. Nonetheless, it is a wonderful collection and a must read for anyone who loves writing and literature. Saunders is a truly unique voice.

From the cattiness of the office break room to the loneliness of an overlooked haunted house, these stories explore a wildly imaginative array of imploding relationships and dysfunctional interactions. Yet, at a time when we seem to be constantly at one another’s throats, Saunders graces his characters with the willingness to learn compassion, which makes these tales as moving as they are outrageous. Some stories hold a mirror up to life; these hold a mirror up to our souls.

A great set of stories. In my opinion, Saunders is the best living writer of short stories in English.

I see that some reviewers that arrived before me at Goodreads have said that many of the stories in this new collection resemble previously-published Saunders stories. This is true. It's like Saunders is trying different variations on ideas and structures he has either written about already, changing only a few variables, to see which combination works best.

For example, the title story resembles “The Simplica Girls Diary”. Both stories have a sci-fi/ironic commentary conceit, specifically, that poor people would allow their brains to be wiped (because they need the money) and consent to a life of mind-wiped slavery in the status-enhancing diversions of the rich. It's like Saunders looked back on “The Simplica Girls Diary” and said to himself, “Hmm, what if I retold this story from the point of the view of the enslaved?”

I also thought the short story “A Thing at Work” (in this volume) resembled (perhaps my favorite) Saunders' short story “Victory Lap” (NOT in this volume), in that the narrative slips in and out of the interior monologues of three characters, and each ends on (what I think is) an ambiguous note, where you ask yourself “To what extent are the characters lying to themselves, and to what extent are they lying to others?”

As others have noted here, the story “Sparrow” resembles Chekhov's “The Darling”, which Saunders analyzed at length in A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. It's as if Saunders said to himself: “Hmm, I could set the same situation in the present and it would sound completely natural. Let's try it!”

“Ghoul” resembles “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”.

And so on.

I guess that grumblers can grumble that there's not much new here. That might be a fair criticism. However, I think that sometimes fiction writers of talent have to work out all the possibilities of their previous ideas before deciding to move on to fresh new ideas (if they have any).

If you've read Saunders before and liked him, you'll like this.

My favorite story was “Love Letter”. It's sad and disturbing, but these are sad and disturbing times.

I received an electronic advance review copy of this book free of charge. Thank you to the publisher, Penguin Random House, and Netgalley.