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Product Description
Product Description
A collection of six stories and a novella, CIVILWARLAND IN BAD DECLINE introduces an astonishing new voice in American fiction. George Saunders' vision of America's near future is as black and funny as you can get. He takes us on a trip to the shopping malls and theme parks and enviromental hazards that lie just around the chronological corner, introducing us to gang of misfits and losers struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. Saunders' dialogue is superb, his plots marvellously bizarre: he is an original and uniquely American voice destined to become one of the most important literary discoveries of his generation.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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....
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Every bit as good as Saunders' other collections. The recurrent themes and style of his writing sometimes make his stories feel as if they are all part of one gigantic novel about the American Dream gone sour. There's a real sense of humanity here, too -- like the best satirists, Saunders is angry beause he cares.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I didn't know when I bought this book that it was a collection of short stories, in fact I was under the impression that it was supposed to be funny. All the stories are all well written, but written with a dry quirky wit which doesn't generate many smiles or laughs. I did find myself taken along with the stories, they are engrossing, largely because Saunders creates worlds and characters of such a strange genus riding between real and unreal that you wonder where it's all going (like an amusement park that uses it's employees to shot unwanted gangs of youths). The versimilitude of his writing rides a fine line and I think I found the chopping between the reality of each story irritating and not to my taste. I was also disappointed that there wasn't more to the book, which I finished easily without any effort made on my part. If I had a teenage son, or a bright kid I might recommend this to him.
Harsh, but I'm disappointed.
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