Review: "Tenth of December" by George Saunders

3 stars.

I didn't think I would have that much to say about Tenth of December, but I ended up having a lot.

I have wanted to read a work of George Saunders for some time. He has won several major literary awards, including the Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo. This short story collection won the Story Prize and the Folio Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the National Book Award. He also has a diverse portfolio, having written short stories, novellas, novels, nonfiction, and even children's books. In Tenth of December, I have some negative things to say about it, but his creativity really does shine through.

One of my first impressions of Tenth of December is that Saunders writes in an extremely pretentious manner. For example, on page 10, Saunders writes, "Still obviously found something fun about life and good about people, otherwise why sometimes stay up so late grading you come in next day all exhausted, blouse on backward, having messed it up in the early-morning dark, you dear discombobulated thing?" However, it gets less pretentious in subsequent stories, as evidenced by quotes such as, "They didn't have to feel what you felt; they just had to be supported in feeling what they felt." (32);

I will say that Saunders leaves out many details, which is obviously for effect. However, that makes his writing a bit hard to get at times. Tenth of December, I felt, quickly turned shocking and gripping, a far cry from a lot of short story collections. Then it became weird, and stayed weird for most of the collection, if not all of it.

I will say that each story was very different from the others. They were different in conventions, such as capitalization and punctuation, and also writing style (which is a trick not many writers can pull off). Furthermore, each story was almost a different genre, and they felt like each one was set in a different world, especially the moderately speculative ones.

One common thread they had was that they were all at least moderately disturbing. When I started a new story, I wondered how it would get disturbing, in what way. In those way Tenth of December is almost reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's filmography. Each story is very different, but all have disturbing elements.

Saunders is also verbose. It is no easy feat to say too much and simultaneously leave out important details, which I indeed mean as a criticism. While Tenth of December does make one read between the lines, he uses too many words to do so.

Given these observations, I was deciding whether to give Tenth of December three stars or four. I decided on three as I enjoyed it less than All the Light We Cannot See, which I gave four. However, it did make me think. It made me think a lot, and that is where its redeeming value lies, more than anywhere else.

Total time spent reading: 4 hours.