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Book: Stories thoughtfully vivid, funny
Michael Fischer, For The Express-News : March 7, 2013 : Updated: March 8, 2013 2:28pm
Tenth of December
By George Saunders
Random House, $26
The stories collected in George Saunders' “Tenth of December” start and end abruptly. Characters are introduced in bits and pieces, and following what happens requires deciphering clues and connecting dots that Saunders leaves scattered. The settings remain vague, often mixing the familiar with the surreal. In “My Chivalric Fiasco,” for example, a Wendy's and a closed-down Outback coexist with a bizarre unexplained event called TorchLightNight.
Throughout these stories, Saunders is inventive, thoughtful and very funny. He is also compassionate and tender toward his usually hilarious characters. He is especially good at appreciating family relationships: adults missing their deceased parents, husbands and wives depending on one another, fathers and mothers worrying about their children. The pressures of an uncertain economy strain these relationships, as many of Saunders' characters worry about losing their low-paying jobs, failing to pay off their credit cards, and foregoing medical expenses — real possibilities “given the current climate,” as an unnamed divisional director tells his staff in “Exhortation.”
Falling further behind seems more likely than getting ahead. In “Al Roosten,” divorce forces a 45-year-old mother of three to move in with her brother, who is worried that if he loses his small business, she'll have to quit school and get a third job to help them make ends meet. He finds her one night “at the kitchen table after her shift at Costco, fast asleep across her community-college nursing text.” He admires her ambition even though he knows “the snobs” in his world would find it laughable.
Diminished opportunities eat away at the self-esteem of many of these characters as they watch the rich get richer. But their limitations never defeat them. They prove themselves capable of extraordinary acts of kindness and heroism.
In “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” a financially strapped father doesn't want to think badly of anyone and struggles with his feeling that “it is not right that rich people make us middle people feel dopey and inadequate.” He worries that his daughter, “growing up in paucity,” will get down on herself and her world. Despite his money woes, he ends up acting with “the largesse and sense of generosity” he wants his children to have.
I seldom encounter heroes like these in the other books that I read or movies I see. Saunders is especially worth reading now, when American politics risk becoming a soulless landscape of fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings. To populate that bleak scene with parents, brothers and sisters and children, turn to “Tenth of December.” I can't imagine a timelier book.