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moonsequel 's review for:
Liberation Day: Stories
by George Saunders
And, like that, I’m all caught up.
Maybe it was a big mistake, racing through all of Saunders’ story collections in, what, two, two and a half weeks? Actually, I know it to be a mistake. Saunders is special and I indulged so quickly and now I’m all out. At least the guy is still kicking. There’ll be more.
A lot of these stories feel like rehashes. Like, the title story is a mix of Semplica Girls and My Chivalrous Fiasco. Ghoul is another themed entertainment park story, except this one doesn’t have any guests. Well, Pastoralia didn’t really have any guests either. A Thing at Work is pretty Reminiscent of Downtrodden Mary. Elliott Spencer and Jon… I mean, all the stories are good, but they get less good as you go and kinda tend to get mixed up when you look back. Maybe if I started with Liberation Day, these stories would be my favorite, maybe they’re technically better than the stories leading up to, but it’s hard to really tell, having read it last. But, actually, I’m pretty convinced that they aren’t anywhere near as funny. This is the least funny of Saunders works, easily.
My ranking of his collections would go:
Civilwarland in Bad Decline
Pastoralia
Tenth of December
Liberation Day
In Persuasion Nation
Which is nearly in order of their release dates.
One things about Liberation Day is that the closing story is incredible, really really beautiful, easily the best in this collection at only around 10 pages. Doesn’t follow the typical Saunders formally, this is one of his realistic stories. Which honestly sometimes hit. Like, you don’t come to Saunders for Realism, but some of his best don’t reside in his wheelhouse. Tenth of December, Victory Lap, Winky, the End of FIRPO. Like, these are actually among my favorites and skip all the dystopia stuff.
Which is, I guess, to say, that I think the theme park setup and the memory wiped characters and stuff is a little played at this point and I really appreciate when he steps outside of that.
Maybe it was a big mistake, racing through all of Saunders’ story collections in, what, two, two and a half weeks? Actually, I know it to be a mistake. Saunders is special and I indulged so quickly and now I’m all out. At least the guy is still kicking. There’ll be more.
A lot of these stories feel like rehashes. Like, the title story is a mix of Semplica Girls and My Chivalrous Fiasco. Ghoul is another themed entertainment park story, except this one doesn’t have any guests. Well, Pastoralia didn’t really have any guests either. A Thing at Work is pretty Reminiscent of Downtrodden Mary. Elliott Spencer and Jon… I mean, all the stories are good, but they get less good as you go and kinda tend to get mixed up when you look back. Maybe if I started with Liberation Day, these stories would be my favorite, maybe they’re technically better than the stories leading up to, but it’s hard to really tell, having read it last. But, actually, I’m pretty convinced that they aren’t anywhere near as funny. This is the least funny of Saunders works, easily.
My ranking of his collections would go:
Civilwarland in Bad Decline
Pastoralia
Tenth of December
Liberation Day
In Persuasion Nation
Which is nearly in order of their release dates.
One things about Liberation Day is that the closing story is incredible, really really beautiful, easily the best in this collection at only around 10 pages. Doesn’t follow the typical Saunders formally, this is one of his realistic stories. Which honestly sometimes hit. Like, you don’t come to Saunders for Realism, but some of his best don’t reside in his wheelhouse. Tenth of December, Victory Lap, Winky, the End of FIRPO. Like, these are actually among my favorites and skip all the dystopia stuff.
Which is, I guess, to say, that I think the theme park setup and the memory wiped characters and stuff is a little played at this point and I really appreciate when he steps outside of that.