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A review by earlyandalone
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
4.0
This book went by too fast. It was my first George Saunders book and I can see why he's considered the greatest living short story writer we have.
I admit, I was expecting the stories to be a little more light. But that's where, ultimately, the beauty comes--from all of the darkness and suffering in these stories. Saunders is a master at creating characters we like, characters we are rooting for, who are constantly suffering and messing up and being human. It's this human frailty that makes them so easy to cheer for, even when most of the time, they are crushed.
In Bounty, the novella, Saunders paints an incredibly bleak picture of our future, where genetically flawed people are enslaved, lynched, and driven from their homes and families. Cole, one of these Flaweds, sets out on a quest to rescue his sister, Connie, from what he believes are the evil clutches of a Normal who has taken her away from BountyLand, a theme park where the two worked. He faces incredible pain, prejudice, and brutality, but it is in the small moments where he contemplates freedoms, like the joy of being able to drive through a drive-thru, buy a bag of hamburgers, and drive away into the night with your lover, or having a backyard, or smelling the grass--small freedoms that we take for granted every day that are really beautiful, when you think about it. All of these stories force us to think about it, and that's why they're so great.
I admit, I was expecting the stories to be a little more light. But that's where, ultimately, the beauty comes--from all of the darkness and suffering in these stories. Saunders is a master at creating characters we like, characters we are rooting for, who are constantly suffering and messing up and being human. It's this human frailty that makes them so easy to cheer for, even when most of the time, they are crushed.
In Bounty, the novella, Saunders paints an incredibly bleak picture of our future, where genetically flawed people are enslaved, lynched, and driven from their homes and families. Cole, one of these Flaweds, sets out on a quest to rescue his sister, Connie, from what he believes are the evil clutches of a Normal who has taken her away from BountyLand, a theme park where the two worked. He faces incredible pain, prejudice, and brutality, but it is in the small moments where he contemplates freedoms, like the joy of being able to drive through a drive-thru, buy a bag of hamburgers, and drive away into the night with your lover, or having a backyard, or smelling the grass--small freedoms that we take for granted every day that are really beautiful, when you think about it. All of these stories force us to think about it, and that's why they're so great.