An interesting collection of short stories. Not the best from Saunders, but certainly worth the time it took ton read them ( )

6 stories, one 5 star, two 4 stars, two 3 stars, and one 2 star = 3.5. I'm rounding to a three despite my LOVE for this author. One of the issues is the stories appeared in the order of best to worst (in my opinion), so that left you feeling a little bereft at the end instead of elated. Had the order been reversed, I probably would have gone with 4 stars.

Saunders' stories make fun of the mundane in very creative ways, and I really enjoy his weird characters. But you can tell this was his first book. [b:Tenth of December|13641208|Tenth of December|George Saunders|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1349967540s/13641208.jpg|19256026] was five stars all the way for me, so if you want to try Saunders short stories, I'd start there instead.

My favorite of the six stories was Pastoralia. A man and a woman portray cave people for some type of exhibit/amusement park. The on the job rules are very strict, and the living conditions are difficult, but both need the job because of challenging family situations. When the amusement park undergoes hard financial times, the pressure on job performance increases which leads to all sorts of consternation. I feel like this story is typical Saunders. Take a realistic situation - - people in a high pressure job which they need and which is vaguely exploitative - - and re-write it in a way that is both funny and a bit horrifying with fascinating characters that you actually do get to know in a very short period of time. Saunders sense of humor definitely aligns with mine, so I find myself chuckling, but it is subtle so perhaps it might not appeal to all. ( )

A collection of one novella -- the title story, which features a guy whose job is pretending to be a caveman in some kind of supposedly educational themed attraction and his less-than-enthusiastic work partner -- and five shorter pieces. All of them feature ordinary (or, honestly, pretty pathetic) working people with difficult (or, honestly, pretty pathetic) lives, all of them have that wonderfully off-kilter quality Saunders excels at so thoroughly, and all of them sit right at some kind of weird intersection between the hilarious and the deeply sad, although some tilt more strongly in one direction or the other.

It's great stuff. The only one that didn't completely grab me was "Winky," which starts, I think, much more strongly than it ends. But, really, even Saunders' not-quite-on-target stuff is better than a lot of folks' best efforts. ( )

Kinda liked the stories, but the characters were really hard to like. Pitiful mostly, but hard to feel sorry for. At the same time the main characters’ inner dialogs frequently seemed very like my own at times. Very funny but seemed to verge into cruelty. I liked his two more recent books better, Lincoln in the Bardo and 10th of December. ( )

Saunders' earlier work. Really engaging stories about people trying to cope with quirky situations. The settings are surreal without being fantastical. The characters operate under emotional and practical constraints that cast life as an uphill, often endless struggle. ( )