![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() U’s captive/volunteer performers act out Custer’s Last Stand. U and his friends? Why? And to find that they volunteered to be stuck to the wall! It’s vintage Saunders: weird and dark yet dappled with light, familiar yet bizarre, with several twists, as when Mr. Human beings stuck to a Speaking Wall, operated like puppets for the pleasure and entertainment of Mr. ![]() Lincoln in the Bardo has a narrow aperture, and I remember thinking as I read the first few pages, “Where in the world are you going with this, George?” I had a similar reaction reading “Liberation Day,” a sense of confusion and a feeling of being unbalanced. The nine stories in this latest collection are all different, though readers of Saunders’s previous books will recognize the juxtapositions of pathos and strangeness, humor and inventiveness, violence and empathy. Unless the writer is a consummate master of craft and form, this is risky, but with Liberation Day, Saunders proves his mastery once again. If you read Tenth of December or Lincoln in the Bardo, you know that George Saunders isn’t afraid to challenge readers and make them work. ![]()
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