Review: Tenth of December

Tenth of December by George Saunders
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Unfortunately, this is some of the most powerful writing I've ever read. It's unfortunate because most of these brilliant stories are huge downers. Fortunately, this collection is bookended by two notes of glorious optimism.

His narrators are the resentful, lonely casualties of the American Dream. They're the people about whom Michael Moore would make a polemic, but who wouldn't bother seeing the movie. They hold onto a deluded sense of manifest destiny with a death grip, and the reader's agony is to see the distance growing between these people and the better lives they desperately strive for. The experience of living inside many of these character's heads is draining - after some stories, I had to put the book down for a day or two before I was ready to pick it up again.

Nevertheless, even the darkest stories float with the perfect words, and Saunders' humour is sharp without breaking stride. Reading the whole collection makes the finale all the sweeter, but if it's all just too real, skip to the end (the titular "Tenth of December") and you'll feel all better again.

View all my reviews

Review: All My Sins Remembered

All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"When it came to searing laser murder, Otto was one of the best," says the teaser page inside the cover. I knew I'd found a perfect road trip book.

It's a series of (connected) spy stories, where our superspy hero makes use of his hypnotic and physical conditioning by the interstellar Confederacion to infiltrate human colonies on different worlds to make sure they don't mess up the aliens too badly.

Most striking about Haldeman's writing is how concrete everything feels. Even with the most bizarre premises, his stories play out on ground level with the footsoldiers. The shadows of his experience in the Vietnam War stretch long - always there is struggle between following orders and following conscience, the dubious morality of government, and the disorientation of being thrust into an alien land.

Don't get me wrong - the book still delivers on it's "searing laser murder" promise, but it's a thinking reader's searing laser murder.

View all my reviews