Book: Tenth of December by George Saunders

Hmmm.....this book reminded me of what a French professor told our class once while we were reading Moliere. He said that Moliere was most admired by the folks he most satirized.

I had never read anything by Saunders before, but it seems the literary world likes him. And I did too, sort of......

A family comes to look at a new puppy. But the situation shocks the mom:

"Well, wow, what a super field trip for the kids, Marie thought, ha ha (the filth, the mildew smell, the dry aquarium holding the single encyclopedia volume, the pasta pot on the bookshelf with an inflatable candy can inexplicably sticking out of it), and although some might have been disgusted by the spare tire on the dining-room table...Marie realized (resisting the urge to rush to the sink and wash her hands, in part because the sink had a basketball in it) that what this really was, was deeply sad."

And in the yard:

"When the boy ran, the chain spooled out. He was running now, looking back at her, showing off. When he reached the end of the chain, it jerked and he dropped as if shot. He rose to a sitting position, railed against the chain, whipped it back and forth, crawled to a bowl of of water, and lifted to his lips, took a drink: a drink from a dog's bowl."

The stories are told in fresh imaginative language. They are funny and not funny at the same time. Sometimes it takes a few pages to figure out what exactly is happening. There are stories set in the near future, not exactly sic-fi, definitely more bizarre than the world we know, yet not all that unbelievable....which is one reason to read this book.

Read how beautiful young girls from the third world make money after coming to the US; read how a debilitated cancer patient spends his last days; read of a very ordinary man who wants nothing so much as a happy daughter and what he does to see her smile; read of experiments with mind altering drugs; read of a young man with truly horrid parents who rises above their confining boundaries and does the right thing.

Here is a sad, overweight, middle-aged small business owner:

"He just really hated those beggars walking past his shop with their crude signs. Couldn't they at least spell right? Yesterday one had walked by with a sign that said, PLEASE HELP HOMLESS. He'd felt like shouting, Hey sorry you lost your hom! They spent enough time under that viaduct, couldn't they at least proofread each other's____"

Thanks, Faith, for the recommendation....