It is rare to encounter a writer whose work can be so neatly divided into two halves. George Saunders is known as a satirist with an interest in consumerism and the technology of the near future, but occasionally he will publish moving, sometimes brutal social realist tales. Early stories such as ‘Christmas’ were like strange, dirty artefacts among the glossier SF-tinged material.
Tenth of December is such a strong collection because the wackiness is mostly kept at bay. These are stories about people who are trying to do the right thing in an ungrateful world, and there is less of the shrill goofiness that comprised much of his previous collection, In Persuasion Nation.
But there is still a spectrum: near the crazier end is ‘Escape from Spiderhead’, about a drug that administers a feeling of immediate love (‘Can we stop war? We can sure as heck slow it down!’). The drug, at its experimental stage, causes a Milgram-esque ethical tangle for the test subjects which recalls the paranoia of Philip K. Dick.
‘The Semplica Girl Diaries’ is even weirder. Told as a series of diary entries by a man dealing with the mundane tasks of paying bills and pleasing his kids, while promising to himself that he will lead a better life, we gradually learn that there is something off-kilter about his terrain. So-called ‘Semplica Girls’, who are women from deprived countries looking to make some money, are being hanged — by a ‘microline’ running through their brain — as decorations in the gardens of the wealthy, and those who aspire to be wealthy. The story becomes a twisted examination of moral blindness without being flat-footed and obvious.
At the other end of the spectrum is ‘Home’, told from the perspective of a soldier returning from conflict. The narrator is haunted by a past transgression, but we never find out what it is, and no one else seems interested (‘Thank you for your service’ is all they can muster). The story avoids the stale device of the soldier who is happier in a warzone — this soldier is utterly deracinated, struggling to contain his violence and unable to articulate what is driving him towards it.
As always Saunders’ prose can be slangy and idiosyncratic. Often he uses one-sentence paragraphs, like a thriller writer, but his skill shows in how he can make a rather clipped style carry so much. He is comfortable relating the thoughts of a 14-year-old girl, for instance: ‘Mrs Roosevelt was quite chipper in spite of her husband, who was handicapped, while, in addition, she had been gay, with those big old teeth, long before such time as being gay and First Lady was even conceptual.’ But he is also capable of more refined sentences, inserted stealthily: ‘A dense ball of birds went linear, then settled into the branches of a lightning-blasted tree.’
There are enough moments like this to settle the hearts of people who have a low tolerance for his usual tics. The far-out fabulist has given way to the consummate craftsman, and the result is Saunders’ most involving collection yet.
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