I’m struggling to find words for “Tenth of December”, a wonderful and powerful collection of short stories by George Saunders. The plots, the lingo, the style were like nothing I’ve ever read so far, were not expected to be liked by me. Yet I adore it, treasure it, reading through each story with an earnest hurriedness and meanwhile reluctancy to finish. The tenderness and warmth in the unbearable pain in each story of this collection makes life, whatever life, bearable. “A book to make you love people again”, as Sian Cain wrote about the book for The Guardian, who finished reading it in tears in a cafe in Notting Hill. This is not to say that it’s melancholic, quite the contrary, it’s brutal and controlled, in a very honest and ordinary tone. However weird and distant situations the people find themselves in the stories, you feel a certain relatedness and empathy. And that’s humanity. GO READ IT. And don’t read the reviews by The NY Times or NPR. Why do the Americans have to mess everything up with politics? Read The Guardian review here. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/dec/28/tenth-of-december-by-george-saunders-a-book-to-make-you-love-people-again
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
January 2024
Categories |