The thing about George Saunders is he always makes you think. This is definitely a set of stories for those who enjoy being intellectually challenged by an unusual world rather than for readers who take comfort in the known and seek familiarity in a story. If you loved Saunders’ prize winning but weird Lincoln in the Bardo, or have pretensions to literature and study his texts on writing craft, hey, here’s a book for you.
His stories often have the theme of some kind of sub-category of humans, exploited or trapped, those who don’t fit the mainstream. Lincoln in the Bardo had this with the dead wandering the graveyard unable to escape purgatory. In this collection, three of the futuristic stories also explore this idea, the sub-groups being exploited by the more powerful who, the way Saunders describes it, are acting within the expectations of prevailing society.
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