A review by nickdleblanc
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

4.0

Just finished my first book of 2020. A good read, with one beautiful story and three other greats. Saunders reads as being very frustrated here, something his fantastic Author’s Note provides some insight into. The use of language throughout the stories is confident and vaults frequently from being disturbingly direct to unnaturally over-constructed. This may present as a stumbling block at first but after the first fifteen pages or so, it opens up to the reader becomes clear as a stylistic choice, thusly becoming easier to read. His stories hold a deeply suspicious and cynical view of the American obsession with capitalism and “work” and remain difficult to categorize. There’s a novella which is directly influenced by Huck Finn if Twain had instead set the story in some dystopian future where mutagenics (both natural and man-made) have separated people into two groups, “Flawed” and “Normal.” Our narrator, a Flawed with claws for feet is trying to find his sister who has been sold into what he presumed to be slavery somewhere outside of the strange amusement park-like business which they are indentured to. Having said this, I would hesitate to call it sci-fi. It almost feels too close to reality to call it anything but that. -
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tl;dr: A very American collection of brutal and beautiful satirical stories. Best bets are “Isabelle,” “The 400-Pound CEO,” “Bounty,” and the title story which opens the book.