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One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed masterof the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet. In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,†a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced witha harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In“Home,†a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he leftwith the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss,a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who,over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deludedowner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged bya brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love,to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infusedwith Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation. Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of thecontemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality,

delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human. Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus onwhat is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfillChekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.â€

Advance praise for Tenth of December “Tenth of December shows George Saunders at his most subversive, hilarious, and emotionally piercing. Fewwriters can encompass that range of adjectives, but Saunders is a true original—restlessly inventive, yet deeplyhumane.â€â€”Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad “George Saunders is a complete original, unlike anyone else, thank god—and yet still he manages to be therightful heir to three other complete American originals—Barthelme (the lyricism, the playfulness), Vonnegut (theoutrage, the wit, the scope), and Twain (the common sense, the exasperation). There is no author I recommend topeople more often—for ten years I’ve urged George Saunders onto everyone and everyone. You want funny?Saunders is your man. You want emotional heft? Saunders again. You want stories that are actually about something—stories that again and again get to the meat of matters of life and death and justice and country? Saunders. There isno one better, no one more essential to our national sense of self and sanity.â€â€”Dave Eggers, author of A Hologramfor the King

Praise for George Saunders “Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.â€â€”Zadie Smith “George Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We’re lucky to have him.â€â€”JonathanFranzen “An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need toget us through these times.â€â€”Thomas Pynchon

About The AuthorMacArthur “Genius Grant†fellow George Saunders is the acclaimed author of several collections of short stories,including Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, as well as a collection of essays and a book for children. Heteaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

ReviewsThe Washington Post - Jeff Turrentine

In one way or another, all the tales in Tenth of December, [Saunders's] amazing new collection of stories, are aboutthe tragedy of separation. What distinguishes it from the three equally fine collections that have preceded it…is theadded pinch of semi-sweet salvation, an ingredient most other satirists diligently avoid for fear of ruining their sour-

by-design recipes.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchised…If hisearlier books reverberated with echoes of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut, Mr. Saunders's latest offeringâ

€¦seems to have more in common with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. There are still touches of surreal

weirdness here…but for the most part the humor is more muted and the stories tend to pivot around loneliness,disappointment, frustration and the difficulty of connecting with other human beings. Although sentiment has alwayslurked beneath the antic, corrugated surface of Mr. Saunders's work, there is a new sympathy for his characters inthese pages, an emphasis on how bad luck, poor judgment, lack of resources and family misfortune can snowball

into violence or catastrophe.

The New York Times Book Review - Gregory Cowles

In Tenth of December, [Saunders's] fourth and best collection, readers will encounter an abduction, a rape, achemically induced suicide, the suppressed rage of a milquetoast or two, a veteran's post-traumatic impulse to burn

down his mother's house—all of it buffeted by gusts of such merriment and tender regard and daffy good cheerthat you realize only in retrospect how dark these morality tales really are…despite the dirty surrealism andcleareyed despair, Tenth of December never succumbs to depression. That's partly because of Saunders's

relentless humor…But more substantially it's because of his exhilarating attention to language and his beatificgenerosity of spirit.

Publishers Weekly

The title of Saunders's fourth collection doesn't reference any regularly observed holiday, but for the MacArthur-certified genius's fans, a new collection, his first in six years, is a cause to celebrate. Yet the 10 stories here—sixof which ran in the New Yorker—might make readers won over by earlier, irony-laced absurdities like Pastoralia's

"Sea Oak" or corporate nightmares like "CommComm" from In Persuasion Nation question whether they knowSaunders as well as they think they do. Yes, "Puppy" is about a maniacally upbeat mother on a "Family Mission" to

adopt a dog only to discover the dog owner's son chained to a tree in the backyard "via some sort of doohicky."Yes, "Escape from Spiderhead" is about evil experiments to make love and take love away using drugs with nameslike Darkenfloxxâ„¢. But readers expecting zany escapism will be humbled by the pathos on display in stories like"Home," where a soldier returns to his humble origins. "Victory Lap" features a disarming case of child kidnapping,and "The Semplica Girl Diaries" is a heartbreaking chronicle of two months of changeable fortune in the life of a

lower-middle-class paterfamilias of modest expectation ("graduate college, win Pam, get job, make babies, forgetfeeling of special destiny"). Eventually, a suspicion creeps in that, behind Saunders's comic talents, he might be the

most compassionate writer working today. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Jan. 8)

Boston Globe

George Saunders captures the fragmented rhythms, disjointed sensory input, and wildly absurd realities of the 21stcentury experience like no other writer.

San Francisco Chronicle

It's tough to think of a living short-story writer - or even a dead one - who garners as much peer approval asGeorge Saunders. Alice Munro, maybe, but that's about it. . . . It's Saunders whose name is both whispered in

reverent tones and shouted from the rooftops by other authors. His sparkling new story collection Tenth ofDecember demonstrates why. . . . Saunders uses humor to amplify tension rather than avoid it, and the results aresuperb. Many of the 10 stories are comfortable with making us uncomfortable. They go for the jugular instead of thefunny bone, and they're capable of astounding, unnerving and delighting all at once. The prose is so smartly craftedthroughout that it makes me want to go back and re-evaluate all of Saunders' previous books. But first I plan to re-

reread this new collection one more time.

Kirkus Reviews

A new story collection from the most playful postmodernist since Donald Barthelme, with narratives that can beenjoyed on a number of different levels. Literature that takes the sort of chances that Saunders does is rarely asmuch fun as his is. Even when he is subverting convention, letting the reader know throughout that there is an

authorial presence pulling the strings, that these characters and their lives don't exist beyond words, he seducesthe reader with his warmth, humor and storytelling command. And these are very much stories of these times, filled

with economic struggles and class envy, with war and its effects, with drugs that serve as a substitute for deeperemotions (like love) and perhaps a cure (at least temporary) for what one of the stories calls "a sort of vast

existential nausea." On the surface, many of these stories are genre exercises. "Escape from Spiderhead" has allthe trappings of science fiction, yet culminates in a profound meditation on free will and personal responsibility. One

story is cast as a manager's memo; another takes the form of a very strange diary. Perhaps the funniest andpotentially the grimmest is "Home," which is sort of a Raymond Carver working-class gothic send-up. A veteran

returns home from war, likely suffering from post-traumatic stress. His foulmouthed mother and her new boyfriendare on the verge of eviction. His wife and family are now shacking up with a new guy. His sister has crossed theclass divide. Things aren't likely to end well. The opening story, "Victory Lap," conjures a provisional, conditional

reality, based on choices of the author and his characters. "Is life fun or scary?" it asks. "Are people good or bad?"The closing title story, the most ambitious here, has already been anthologized in a couple of "best of" annuals: It

moves between the consciousness of a young boy and an older man, who develop a lifesaving relationship.Nobody writes quite like Saunders.

None of these short stories appealed to me; none of the charecters are likeable and the details of their lives are mostlydepressing. Since this reviewer is 81 years old and lives in the Northeast, he suggests you consult other reviews.

It is quite something to come across a writer of versatility and skill who doesn’t figure (now that they have your ear—you bought the book, didn’t you?) they will add more than they need just because they can. This is a slim volume ofstories that all of us should have--to read, to cherish, and to share. Saunders has a distinct voice that reveals us as weare now. We may say that his stories do not have the language of the old masters, but they have the language we use,with more kindness, generosity of spirit, and humor mixed in than most of us can rustle up on an ordinary day.

In the “Afterword” to Although Of Course You End up Becoming Yourself, an extended interview with David FosterWallace by David Lipsky writing for Rolling Stone magazine, Lipsky says of Wallace’s style that he wrote “the stuffyou semi-thought, the background action you blinked through at supermarkets and commutes.” You heard it, you knowit, but it doesn’t register enough for you to articulate and consider. Wallace was able to do that, and Saunders does italso. He reaches in and gets that real thing that you discarded, shines it, and shows you how it defines us.

If I could ask him, I would ask Saunders how he chose which stories to include in this volume. He spans the range ofus, starting out in the mind of suburban teenagers looking at each other with longing or appraisal ("VictoryLap"), and ends with a gentleman of great age descending the staircase of dementia to his grave ("Tenth ofDecember"). In between we catch glimpses of ourselves as returning soldiers filled with anger and hope("Home"), twenty-somethings undergoing moral and medical testing ("Escape fromSpiderhead"), and middle-aged parents aching to give their children more than they themselves had growing up("The Semplica Girl Diaries").

Saunders is funny, kind, precise with his sword-thrusts which reach the heart but do not kill. I do not think we needask “where do you get your inspiration?” since echoes of Mao Zedong ring through "Exhortation", and wealso know the zany neighbor in "Sticks", or can imagine the source of the internal dialogue in "MyChivalric Fiasco". These people are us, and he treats us gently and allows us to laugh, with regret sometimes,with recognition at other times. But he doesn’t laugh at us and we don’t laugh with cynicism. We are grateful toSaunders because, despite his pointing out our failings and our shortcomings, we can sense he still likes us, and evencelebrates our efforts in trying to make sense of, and make our way in, this crazy world.

I have too many favorite bits to single one out. But perhaps after all, my favorite bit is the fact that he doesn’t use toomany words. It is honed and toned and polished and clear and gets to the heart of the matter. It isn’t a long book, soyou can easily find your own favorite bit. It’s all good. Go out and buy it. This is one you will want to reread: you willread it when you are happy, and you will read it when you are sad, you will read to see how he did that.

None of these short stories appealed to me; none of the charecters are likeable and the details of their lives are mostlydepressing. Since this reviewer is 81 years old and lives in the Northeast, he suggests you consult other reviews.

Read An ExcerptTENTH of DECEMBER

The pale boy with unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs and cublike mannerisms hulked to the mudroom closet and req-uisitioned Dad's white coat. Then requisitioned the boots he'd spray-painted white. Painting the pellet gun white hadbeen a no. That was a gift from Aunt Chloe. Every time she came over he had to haul it out so she could make a bigstink about the wood grain.

Today's assignation: walk to pond, ascertain beaver dam. Likely he would be detained. By that species that livedamongst the old rock wall. They were small but, upon emerging, assumed certain proportions. And gave chase. Thiswas just their methodology. His aplomb threw them loops. He knew that. And reveled in it. He would turn, level thepellet gun, intone: Are you aware of the usage of this human implement?

Blam!

They were Netherworlders. Or Nethers. They had a strange bond with him. Sometimes for whole days he would justnurse their wounds. Occasionally, for a joke, he would shoot one in the butt as it fled. Who henceforth would limp forthe rest of its days. Which could be as long as an additional nine million years.

Safe inside the rock wall, the shot one would go, Guys, look at my butt.

As a group, all would look at Gzeemon's butt, exchanging sullen glances of: Gzeemon shall indeed be limping for thenext nine million years, poor bloke.

Because yes: Nethers tended to talk like that guy in Mary Poppins.

Which naturally raised some mysteries as to their ultimate origin here on Earth.

Detaining him was problematic for the Nethers. He was wily. Plus could not fit through their rock-wall opening. Whenthey tied him up and went inside to brew their special miniaturizing potion--Wham!-- he would snap their antiquatedrope with a move from his self-invented martial arts system, Toi Foi, a.k.a., Deadly Forearms. And place at theirdoorway an implacable rock of suffocation, trapping them inside.

Later, imagining them in their death throes, taking pity on them, he would come back, move the rock.

Blimey, one of them might say from withal. Thanks, guv'nor. You are indeed a worthy adversary.

Sometimes there would be torture. They would make him lie on his back looking up at the racing clouds while theytortured him in ways he could actually take. They tended to leave his teeth alone. Which was lucky. He didn't even liketo get a cleaning. They were dunderheads in that manner. They never messed with his peen and never messed with hisfingernails. He'd just abide there, infuriating them with his snow angels. Sometimes, believing it their coup de grâce,not realizing he'd heard this since time in memorial from certain in-school cretins, they'd go, Wow, we didn't evenknow Robin could be a boy's name. And chortle their Nether laughs.

Today he had a feeling that the Nethers might kidnap Suzanne Bledsoe, the new girl in homeroom. She was fromMontreal. He just loved the way she talked. So, apparently, did the Nethers, who planned to use her to repopulate theirdepleted numbers and bake various things they did not know how to bake.

All suited up now, NASA. Turning awkwardly to go out the door.

Affirmative. We have your coordinates. Be careful out there, Robin.

Whoa, cold, dang.

Duck thermometer read ten. And that was without windchill. That made it fun. That made it real. A green Nissan wasparked where Poole dead-ended into the soccer...

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