I am always a fan of George Saunders, and I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of his newest collection, Liberation Day. Everything I have picked up by Saunders remains resonant and bizarre, echoing in my head long after I have read it. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Tenth of December, and Lincoln in the Bardo are about as incredible examples of the art form as one can find, little pilot lights that keep burning in the oven of my own manuscripts over the years. And, of course, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain explores the very techniques and inspirations that help drive the machinery behind stories like these.
These are all strong pieces that exist unmistakably within the Saunders universe, even if I enjoyed some more than others. The thing about story collections is that I tend to read them slowly so the stories do not bleed together into a marmalade of one thing, and that is somewhat the danger here. The pieces are similar enough in style — Saunders’ signature absurdism, systems that beg us to engage while simultaneously dehumanizing us, and humor that gradually devolves into deep black despair. Taking breaks between stories and working through them independently, with some sort of palate cleanser between courses, feels like the best approach.
My favorites in the collection, in no particular order, include:
Sparrow
Published here for the first time, “Sparrow” is an extremely short piece that tells the story of an awkward grocery store employee confronting her dark loneliness by reinventing herself romantically and emotionally. The narrative structure is beautiful in the way it builds the world of its narrator with such compassion while still leaving enough space for the reader to construct their own understanding of this tragic character being chewed up by the people around her.
Liberation Day
Another piece original to the collection, the title story is perhaps the strongest here, coupling Saunders’ signature dystopian technological dehumanization with a satirical lens that is both hilarious and deeply sad. Wealthy elites own slaves called “Speakers” who perform historical reenactments through a technology that effectively inserts them into staged events for the entertainment of their masters. That is, until there is a disruption in the system — a liberation — that derails the script and exposes the grotesque reality beneath the performance. Its historical and moral significance quickly becomes apparent, as do its modern implications, particularly the puppetry behind events like January 6th.
The Mom of Bold Action
Man, this should have been called Most of the Moms I Know. After an accident, a mother jumps into action and begins performing the kind of parenting she has absorbed from fictional media, as if she is auditioning for the role of “perfect movie mom.” Our society is crippled by this anxious performativity, and Saunders captures the social-media-fueled “look at me and how good of a parent I am” fictitiousness of modern life in a beautifully self-aware way. I honestly wish everyone could read this story and snap out of it. God knows plenty of fathers — myself included — have seen enough of the mountains of fiction we are told to worry about compared to the grain of sand that is the truth of what actually matters in parenting, let alone how absurd so much of it looks in practice. Saunders explores the internal psychology behind all of it and turns it inside out through deeply existential comedy. This story originally appeared in The New Yorker.
While all of the stories here are worthwhile, these were my favorites. It is yet another triumphant collection from Saunders, containing several outstanding new pieces that had not been previously published.
Garrett Zecker 