In a dystopian future, a man creates a reenactment of the Battle of Little Bighorn in his home using actors and singers whose past lives have been erased. The parents of a young boy assaulted by a homeless person seek revenge but target the wrong man. A grandfather writes an emotional letter to his grandson about how to view and live life. An imbalanced woman steals office supplies and winds up on the wrong end of some nasty workplace politics. Two people without much going on separately find love and strength as a couple. A ghoulish amusement park is created beneath a Colorado town for the ostensible purpose of preserving humanity. Two mothers with a long-standing feud are clueless about how they are impacting their children. A violent man whose memories have been scraped is used as a pawn other people’s political agenda. A man tries to buy the house of his dreams from a reluctant owner before he dies.

These are the themes summarizing the nine tales comprising Liberation Day by George Saunders, an author widely acknowledged as a master of the short story format. I can certainly attest to that mastery, having read and thoroughly enjoyed several past collections of his short fiction (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, Tenth of December), as well as Saunders’ absolutely brilliant exploration of how the best short stories are written and should be read (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain), based on his “other” career as a literature professor. Those were all highly satisfying books to read as they showcased just how insightful and inventive of a writer he can be, while still mixing in a surprising combination of thoughtful, disturbing, and outright funny elements for good measure.

By contrast, I found Liberation Day to fall somewhat short of the very high bar those earlier works have set. To be sure, there was really nothing wrong with the volume—Saunders’ craftsmanship and imagination are as strong as ever—but I found few of the stories to be particularly entertaining or memorable. While the myriad plotlines listed above make expressing a unifying theme difficult, it can be said that two-thirds of the tales take place in realistic settings with the other three being of the slightly-alternate-world variety. These latter works, including the title story (which, at a quarter of the book’s total length, is almost a novella), ‘Ghoul’, and ‘Elliot Spencer’, were the ones I found to be the most complete and affecting. On the other hand, ‘Love Letter’, ‘Sparrow’, and ‘My House’ were quite forgettable, despite the brief moments of poignancy they provide. So, while this uneven collection certainly merits attention, it is not the best place to go to understand just how brilliant this author is.

It's always a joy to something new from George Saunders book come my way. Here, after a Booker winner (Lincoln in the Bardo) and a master class in short story technique and appreciation (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain), Saunders presents the form that he excels in -- nine short stories. I must admit to preferring the more realistic in the collection as opposed to the experimental and dystopian, I still found each and every one of them worthy of reading at least twice, first for the narrative flow and next for the appreciation of technique. When I attended an event surrounding publication of The Tenth of December, almost 10 years ago, I remember his sharing one of his secrets. That of economy of expression. And he displays that in these stories. Other early readers have parsed the stories and been more explicit in the descriptions, so I'll not list details. Only to say that the titular story made me ache, Mother's Day made me laugh, and Love Letter made me go back and read it again. I'll revisit these stories, much as I revisit those of Alice Munro and Lucia Berlin. When you're the best, it's for a reason.

Wow, reading George Saunders stories as an adult gives me the same thrills as reading Stephen King stories (Night Shift, Skeleton Crew etc.) when I was a teenager. I had already read the stories that had been published in the New Yorker. All in all a great collection.

The deal: It’s a collection of short stories from George Saunders. If you’ve ever read any other collection of short stories from George Saunders, you know what’s what here.
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Is it worth it?: George Saunders is polarizing, even within my own husk of a brain. I hated Lincoln In The Bardo. Like, vehemently. But when my man does the whole Winesburg, Ohio meets Black Mirror shit, which is exactly what this is? Impeccable. (If you want a little taste, the story “Elliott Spencer” is in this collection and was also in The New Yorker a few years back).

Pairs well with: Severance on Apple+, "I am Nadia" by Nadia Lee Cohen

B

Whenever I start a new book by George Saunders, I briefly feel like I've forgotten how to read. The way that he writes is like being submerged in an entirely different world, and it takes a moment to learn how to be in that world again. <i>Liberation Day: Stories</i> is Saunder's latest collection of short stories and the title story pulls you into a new world that is deeply unsettling yet oddly familiar. This collection of stories is deceptively short, yet each one feels so different and asks something different from the reader. To me, the stand out of the collection is "Love Letter". Overall, <i>Liberation Day</i> is a complex collection that shows Saunders remains the master of short stories.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC of this book.

• Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing this Advance Reading Copy. Expected publication date is October 18, 2022.

A collection of nine short stories. I hate to say this because I’ve always enjoyed George Saunders in the past. It felt like homework, grueling homework, trying to get through these stories. They were OK, but I can honestly say that none of them are memorable or outstanding.

Liberation Day - Dystopian retribution for Custer’s Last Stand

The Mom of Bold Action - A mom obsesses about her son getting hurt. When her fears manifest, she and her husband over-retaliate.

Love Letter - After devastating changes in our government, a grandpa advises his grandson, “I just want to say that history, when it arrives, may not look as you expect, based on the reading of history books.”

A Thing at Work - Brenda justifies stealing office supplies. I mean, everyone does it, right?

Sparrow - Gloria has no opinions of her own. Randy is a boring mama’s boy. But together they make a devoted, compatible couple.

Ghoul - The future below Colorado: “Once upon a time, bad things going on Above? Disease stuff, war stuff, famine stuff? Somebody Above thought: Better set a little something aside? Like seeds? And that is us?”

Mother’s Day - A mother has a horrible relationship with her adult children but is incapable of seeing her role in the situation.

Elliott Spencer - What?

My House - No comment

Short stories can be a struggle for me, so I try to read collections very selectively. George Saunders made me a fan with A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, a course in appreciating short stories by Russian masters. I read this book in a day. These are the kinds of stories that work for me: smart and immersive.

George Saunders's writing always offers surprises, and this collection is no exception. As his usual with the short story form, many of the selections have odd premises and outlandish settings; for some, the originality works and holds the plot together. In others, the roller coaster ride gets a little unwieldy, and it feels like the essential thread of the story gets a bit lost. Overall, this collection is a good read: Saunders's whimsy in the form is worth the effort, keeping in mind that some of the stories fall short of a solid reader-text connection.
Thanks to NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC!

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the ebook. Nine new stories from one of the best short story writers of all time. These stories, as always, run the gamut from the fantastical (A society forms an underground amusement park, waiting for an audience that never appears; You can go from a homeless man with no future to having your past memory scraped away to be used as a pawn by a radical group looking for positive change in society.) to the more realistic (We hear the thoughts and share the histories of two women who loved the same man and bump into each other on the corner.). Each story is filled with a dark humor and pathos that make him the best.

Liberation Day is a bunch of interesting short stories. I thought some were very well-written and others I did not really like. The ones I did like were funny at times and thoughtful at others. The ones I did not like were just downright confusing. I found it an interesting collection.

Often short stories read to me like sketches, unexpandable ideas, or scenes cut out from longer works, but with George Saunders, short stories are perfect little worlds, entire unto themselves. Liberation Day: Stories can be broadly divided into weirdly imaginative and expansive near-future tales (generally with a greater class divide and the have-nots further exploited by the fat cats and their strange tech) and stories that feature extreme close-ups into folks’ inner monologues (generally with ironic or humorous results). In each story, the writing is precise, the voices varied and pitch perfect, and it all adds up to a scathing indictment of modern life. Simply masterful.

Thank you for sending the ARC. I read three stories, and though I appreciate George Saunders' imagination, I won't write an online review and won't read the other stories in this book. If I worked my way to finishing the book, I would be taking time away from reading the books I am enjoying right now. I was expecting straightforward tales and mainly that's not what I saw, so I'm disappointed. It was a slog, for the most part. Enjoyed some of the title story, the parts that were clear to me, but the unclear parts, the word tricks, gave me a headache.