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pergolesi 's review for:
Liberation Day: Stories
by George Saunders
This book is quintessentially George Saunders in style and subject matter, but it feels bleaker than any other collection he's written. That redemptively kind reflex in a flawed humanity which I've always loved about Saunders' stories is essentially missing, and many of the stories here feel like almost explicit recantations of those previous moments of moral redemption. In "Liberation Day," the mind-wiped Speaker, a human converted into a stationary performing curiosity, finds the power to recognize the injustice of his plight, but not the will to overturn it. In "Ghoul," Saunders' most dark conception of a roleplaying theme park yet, love is not transcendent but naïve, perhaps incompatible with the status quo, and our main character can only pray for a revolution some time after he is most likely kicked to death for his subversive beliefs. And in "Mother's Day," at that pivotal moment where humans step up and choose to help each other so vital in Tenth of December and Saunders' earlier works, an intense pettiness wins out: Debi returns fuming to her home, and Alma dies on the sidewalk. In this world, you can believe in something better, but it's a dangerous and futile game (and let's be honest, you probably won't do anything to begin with). It's a striking and oppressively consistent tonal shift, and I can't be sure what to make of it.