"For all of that, I hope you live forever, and if the place falls down around you, as it seems to be doing, I hope even that brings you joy. It was always falling down around you, everything has always been falling down around us. Only we were too alive to notice."
Nine short stories from a master paint vivid picture of post-democratic, post-truth America.
Undercurrents of guilt, nihilism, and imprisonment run through the nine short stories that compose George Saunders's "Liberation Day."
In stories like "Liberation Day," "Love Letter," "Ghoul," and "Elliott Spencer," the author delves into explorations of post-truth and post-democratic America.
"It did not seem (and please destroy this letter after you have read it) that someone so clownish could disrupt something so noble and time-tested and seemingly strong, something that had been with us literally every day of our lives. We had taken, in other words, a profound gift for granted. Did not know the gift was a fluke, a chimera, a wonderful accident of consensus and mutual understanding."
"Mom of Bold Action"dresses up as a commentary on Karens, but is instead a look at the ripple effects of anxiety, while "Mother's Day" examines the secrets that everyday people have and hold.
"'I want to thank you,' she whispers, leaning in, smelling good, like a rose if a rose were a bit angry."
The finale, "My House," is a seven-page master class on depicting melancholy and mortality, and "A Thing At Work" is perhaps the highlight, a wonderfully wrought depiction of workplace politics, dynamics, subcultures, and double-speak.
In the short story form, Saunders sketches memorable characters who have either built and become puppet to their own fates or are sacrificing their futures to a dystopian landscape. "Liberation Day" is a stunning indictment of contemporary society -- and a warning of what may yet come.
"Peace is not, apparently, the general human intention, although in the spare hour (in the dear home, in the individual heart) it may sometimes be."
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