Saunders received an MA with an emphasis in creative writing in 1988. He has also worked in Sumatra on an oil exploration geophysics crew, as a doorman in Beverly Hills, a roofer in Chicago, a convenience store clerk, a guitarist in a Texas country-and-western band, and a knuckle-puller in a West Texas slaughterhouse.Īfter reading in People magazine about the Master's program at Syracuse University, he applied. He worked at Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, NY as a technical writer and geophysical engineer from 1989 to 1996. in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. George Saunders was born Decemand raised on the south side of Chicago. Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December-through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit-not only entertain and delight they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should 'prepare us for tenderness.' 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. Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. A hapless, deluded owner of an antique store two mothers struggling to do the right thing a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a 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 infused with Saunders' signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

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. In the taut opening, 'Victory Lap,' a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a 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 left with the one to which he has returned.

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

Tenth of december book review