(Taken out of the 40th Street NYPL): I almost didn't finish this one, which is rare for me, especially for a book this short (just under 200 pages.) I enjoyed George Saunders' recent best-seller Lincoln in the Bardo. Also I kept hearing he was the greatest thing since sliced bread--or Kurt Vonnegut. Critics were dubbing him another Mark Twain. But these stories in his first published collection did not appeal to me. The title story which opens the book was gripping and funny. A sad-sack middle manager of a failing historical theme park bemoans his sorry fate and consorts with a family of ghosts. It was darkly funny. But then every story that followed was EXACTLY the same. Some pitiful wretch is stuck in a bizarre setting (usually a theme park), whines about how awful his or her life is, commits a mistake that makes things even worse and either dies or goes to jail. The final novella, Bounty, is a Candide-like voyage tale set in a dystopian future where those born with genetic mutations (called Flaweds) are oppressed into slavery by the Normals. The hero escapes from his prison to seek out his sister and encounters endless misery. What fun!
The 2012 edition is fleshed out with an introduction and an author's afterward to fill out 198 pages. I liked the afterword better than the stories. Saunders describes his early years struggling to fulfill his dreams of being a writer while working as at a boring job as a technical writer in Rochester, NY. His description of the reality was more compelling than his repetitive, depressing fantasies.
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