George Saunders is that rarest of things -- a writer of fractured, strange, speculative fiction, driven almost entirely by heart and compassion, with an exquisite prose style that leaves most 'literary' writers in the shade. A synopsis of any one of the stories in this volume would make them sound 'wacky' or self-consciously weird, but this is not at all the experience of reading them. they are heart-breaking stories of down-trodden lives, minimum wage drones in marginalised jobs (the guy who operates the wave-maker machine at a simulated indoors nature park for example), of the new and unusual cruelties that modern life uses to mash up your soul. They are also very, very funny.
For my money, Saunders is one of the current masters of the short story. His prose is flawlessly paced and beautifully wrought. File next to Kurt Vonnegut, if you're in need of some kind of comparison. Or Kafka. Or Chekhov. Or Alice Munro or Grace Paley or Maupassant or or or....