Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders

If there is a way to like and appreciate an author’s work without outright loving it, then that’s how I am about Saunders’ writing.
Which is to say, I have to really be in the right mood for it (not sure I was this time), and I’m not going to like all of it, but it’ll always be worth a read.
There’s simply no one who writes like him. So for originally alone he gets top scores. But then he’s also so clever, such a good character writer.
This collection of off-beat delights takes on all sorts of subjects from the comically terrifying ghouls in the amusement park to the properly terrifying state of modern democracy to the casual unpleasantness of a workplace and more and it does it with such penance, such inventiveness, such vivid realism mixing with absolute surreal elements, such wryly, morbidly humorous fashion that you can’t help but admire it. Even if you don’t love it.
Genre-wise, this is nearly impossible to place – some sort of mix of science fiction, magic realism, regular realism, drama/comedy. It’s weird, quirky, unusual. Smart and challenging in a good way, this is the sort of fiction that’s unlikely appeal to the average low-fruit hanging best-seller devouring audience which, for my money, makes it shine all the brighter.
So yeah, go on, be a literary snob (the best kind of snob to be) and read Saunders. Recommended.