Generally speaking, I don’t like short stories. I’ve never been able to get into them. I’ve struggled through countless collections full of quaint tales of small happenings and chance encounters, but the fundamental problem has always been that I can’t bring myself to get invested in a setting and in characters that I know will be gone in under thirty pages. When I picked up George Saunders’ critically acclaimed collection Tenth of December, I went in telling myself that if I didn’t like it then this would be the last straw. I would renounce the short story for good and stick to good ol’ fashioned novels. But life, like good stories, finds ways of surprising us, and it transpired that I not only enjoyed Tenth of December, but I would also actively recommend it to other fellow sceptics of short fiction.
What makes Saunders’ stories tick is his focus on style over plot or subject matter. In each of these ten installments, Saunders’ writing grows more original, more experimental, at times outwardly surreal, but always deeply enticing. Reading the opening pages to all the stories is a real mental wrestle match, particular the fanfaring ‘Victory Lap’, which begins like some inexplicable fever dream before settling down into a story of neighbourly courage. It’s hard work to decipher exactly what’s going on a lot of the time, but it gives us enough hooks, enough curious turns of phrase, and just enough personality that it doesn’t alienate us altogether. Striking this balance, the intellectual stimulation that comes with the stories automatically makes the actual subject matter more engaging. Suddenly, we’re invested in each of the narrators’ worlds, and their lingering disappearance a few pages away is less of a bother.
It’s clear that Saunders is deeply skilled when it comes to voice, and that he must have spent years and years honing this craft. It’s clear that there was patient and meticulous investment put into moulding the thought patterns of each story’s narrator. In ‘Puppy’, told from two perspectives that sit on opposite poles of the American class system, there’s an awareness that the meaning and impact of a story lies almost entirely in how it’s told and who is telling it, rather than just the exact events that took place. This awareness sweeps across the collection and ultimately grounds it, making it so that, despite the variation in styles and subjects, all the stories are clearly by the same author.
However, it must be said that a by-product of Saunders’ variation in that the stories don’t feel like they’re all happening in the same universe. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem, were the variation applied consistently. Too often, we find ourselves settled in the Saunders’ strange Middle America, with seemingly cohesive themes about class struggle, community and honest folks just doing the best they can, only for the next story to enter some kind of rich sci-fi landscape such as ‘Escape From Spiderhead’. This is a story about a futuristic drugs trial that uses convicts as test subjects. It’s entertaining enough, but feels far less like a subtle, sensitive insight into the backwaters of everyday life, and much more like an okay episode of Black Mirror. This is one of a handful of missteps the collection takes, also including all sixty pages of ‘The Semplica Girl Diaries’, presented entirely like short, handwritten notes which, when included alongside the one-page-long ‘Sticks’, throws the book’s pacing off to an almost nauseating extent.
But despite its faults, when Saunders applies all the best parts of himself, these stories strike into a vast oil well of humanity. At its best, Tenth of December is odd and gloopy and viscous, but rooted in the planet we buy groceries on and raise families on and break hearts on. As an overall project, there is plenty of room for improvement and refinement, but if you’re one to approach the short story medium with pessimistic apprehension, this may just be the book to nudge you off the fence.
It’s clear that Saunders is deeply skilled when it comes to voice, and that he must have spent years and years honing this craft. It’s clear that there was patient and meticulous investment put into moulding the thought patterns of each story’s narrator. In ‘Puppy’, told from two perspectives that sit on opposite poles of the American class system, there’s an awareness that the meaning and impact of a story lies almost entirely in how it’s told and who is telling it, rather than just the exact events that took place. This awareness sweeps across the collection and ultimately grounds it, making it so that, despite the variation in styles and subjects, all the stories are clearly by the same author.
However, it must be said that a by-product of Saunders’ variation in that the stories don’t feel like they’re all happening in the same universe. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem, were the variation applied consistently. Too often, we find ourselves settled in the Saunders’ strange Middle America, with seemingly cohesive themes about class struggle, community and honest folks just doing the best they can, only for the next story to enter some kind of rich sci-fi landscape such as ‘Escape From Spiderhead’. This is a story about a futuristic drugs trial that uses convicts as test subjects. It’s entertaining enough, but feels far less like a subtle, sensitive insight into the backwaters of everyday life, and much more like an okay episode of Black Mirror. This is one of a handful of missteps the collection takes, also including all sixty pages of ‘The Semplica Girl Diaries’, presented entirely like short, handwritten notes which, when included alongside the one-page-long ‘Sticks’, throws the book’s pacing off to an almost nauseating extent.
But despite its faults, when Saunders applies all the best parts of himself, these stories strike into a vast oil well of humanity. At its best, Tenth of December is odd and gloopy and viscous, but rooted in the planet we buy groceries on and raise families on and break hearts on. As an overall project, there is plenty of room for improvement and refinement, but if you’re one to approach the short story medium with pessimistic apprehension, this may just be the book to nudge you off the fence.
review written by Alex George
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