Book Review: Liberation Day

(Borrowed from the Jackson Heights library): After not enjoying George Saunders' previous collection, Civilwarland in Bad Decline, I decided to give him another chance. After all, reviewers were praising him to the skies and calling him the best short-story wrier alive today. My local library had Liberation Day and it was only a little over 200 pages, so I took it out. My main objection to Civilwarland was all the stories followed the same pattern: dystopian future, usually in a nightmare version of a theme park, some poor schmuck is oppressed, winds up dead or in jail. Not all the stories in Liberation Day were based on the same template--some took inventive departures--but a few were in the same old Saunders rut.

The title story opens the collection and though it was yet another nightmare-future story, it was ingeniously different. In this fantasy, the poor snooks get their memories wiped and are imprisoned as vocal performers recreating historical events by means of computers flooding their brains with information so they become the participants. Ironically, the mind-slaves are reenacting Custer's Last Stand as a group of protesters invade the performance and violence ensues. The historic details are fascinating and offer parallels with the sci-fi elements.

Ghoul and Elliott Spencer are more schleimel-in-nighmare-world stories. The former is set in an abandoned amusement park (again???) and the latter features memory-wiped poor people (again!!!) being used as protestors. Well written, but the same old thing.

The Mom of Bold Action, Mother's Day and A Thing at Work at least offer totally new story arcs. I liked Mom best--well-constructed and full of believable, flawed characters. A children's author finds herself full of unreasoning rage when her son is pushed in the street by a derelict. Her reactions take her and the reader to uncomfortable places. Sparrow is the biggest surprise of all since it has a happy ending and no one winds up dead or in prison. Love Letter and My House are only a few pages each, but are probably the most powerful works in the collection.

I will probably read more of Saunders' work. He is a skilled storyteller and his tales are compelling, even if they're repetitive and the themes are almost always the same.