Tenth of December Tenth of December

Tenth of December

Stories

    • 3.8 • 531 Ratings
    • $13.99
    • $13.99

Publisher Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY AND BUZZFEED • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People • The New York Times Magazine • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • New York • The Telegraph • BuzzFeed • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage • Shelf Awareness

Includes an extended conversation with David Sedaris


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.”

GEORGE SAUNDERS WAS NAMED ONE OF THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD BY TIME MAGAZINE

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2013
January 8
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
272
Pages
PUBLISHER
Random House Publishing Group
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
9.6
MB

Customer Reviews

FunnelEffect ,

flowing with the stream

Rewarding for readers who are into stream-of-consciousness writing. If that's not your thing, look elsewhere.

Carrie Onn ,

Tenth of December

You either love this book or hate it. Note the people who hate it want to lump us love-its into a category dismissed as intellectual. Is that a disease you get in libraries?

I could not put down this brilliant work. The loose text makes it look skimmable, and those who bought it with that in mind must feel cheated. Saunders has folded an opera into drugstore CD rack format. Genius!

A five-star collection. Even though it has no pictures.

Mudman99 ,

Sample Read

Like a bored jazz musician, Saunders tends to indulge outside, which apparently thrills the hyper-literate and befuddles the uninitiated. The first story braced by {brackets} for no mere parenthesis will do, tumbles, monkey brain, as if brilliance is buttresses by the cleverness of it's confusion. He said...it was, Suddenly, and then a bit of cohesion, briefly exposed, like a young ladies navel. I found the teaser, finally, interesting. Still, annoying. As if inaccessibility by itself is a measure of virtue. (Then again, I found infinite jest mostly unreadable, in spite of the tragic loss of it's gifted writer) I'll try again, but these words do the reader few favors.

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