A review by bhnmt61
Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders

4.0

Saunder’s prose is so sharp, so fine-edged, that reading this book is like swallowing a knife. Sometimes his satire is so horrific--like in "The Semplica Girl Diaries"--that I wondered if I really wanted to keep reading. And sometimes he goes beyond brilliant satire into cruelty--like in "Al Roosten," a Walter-Mitty-type tale. But where Thurber in his version seems clearly to be making fun of himself (at least that's what I remember from reading it 25 years ago), Saunders is an over-educated professor at a top university making fun of someone less fortunate than himself, which my mama always told me was rude and catty. But he makes up for it all in the utter and complete right-on social observations of "Escape from Spiderhead," and in the unsentimental pathos of the final story, which gives the book its title. Tenth of December is not an easy read, but it is a thought-provoking one.