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Tenth of December

George Saunders

315 pages

A surreal, darkly funny, and ultimately tender exploration of the bizarre moral obstacle course of modern life.

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What it feels like

Reading this collection feels like navigating a funhouse mirror version of contemporary America, where the reflections are distorted just enough to reveal the painful, absurd truth. The pace is brisk, driven by highly stylized, voice-driven prose that crackles with corporate jargon and fractured, anxious thoughts. At first, the mood is deeply unsettling and darkly satirical, plunging you into bizarre scenarios and moral dilemmas. Yet, beneath the dystopian-tinged weirdness lies a staggering amount of warmth. The emotional texture shifts from wry detachment to profound, devastating empathy, catching you off guard with moments of pure grace. It is a perfect match for readers who crave literary fiction that is as formally inventive as it is fiercely, unapologetically human.

Mood
  • unsettling
  • surreal
  • tender
  • melancholic
Tone
  • satirical
  • compassionate
  • absurdist
  • wry
  • earnest
Pace
brisk
Themes
moral compromise · class anxiety · absurdity of modern life · human connection · mortality
The writing
Highly inventive and colloquial, seamlessly blending corporate jargon, fractured syntax, and intimate internal monologues.
The arc
Begins in disorienting, darkly comedic absurdity and gradually peels back the layers to reveal profound, devastating empathy.
Who it's for
Fans of literary fiction who love when surreal, dystopian-tinged satire gives way to staggering emotional warmth.
Content notes
  • suicide
  • terminal illness
  • violence
  • attempted sexual assault
  • trauma

About the book

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In “Home,” a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is.

A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.”

Description from Open Library.

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