CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There are 7 short stories in this book. The first, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" is sort of interesting, as is the fifth story, "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz." The second story, "Isabelle," is super sad and disturbing to nihilistic levels. I know it technically has a happy ending but holy cow, it's rough. I don't even know what's happening in the third story, "The Wavemaker Falters." Feel free to explain that one to me. The fourth story, "The 400-Pound CEO" is another sad time. The sixth story, "Downtrodden Mary...," is even sadder yet as horrible things happen to an old lady. The seventh story, "Bounty," is actually a dystopian novella about a world where the genetically imperfect are vulnerable to enslavement or annihilation. While I love a good dystopian book, this one is crazypants Saunders in action.

I'm a fan of Saunders (this is my 7th Saunders book), but I wasn't a fan of this collection. Saunders's voice is too similar for each of the characters, especially the bad boss characters that love talking in cliches. The writing doesn't seem clear to me and I had to revisit a lot of it to figure out what was going on. Also, the stories meander so you think it's going to be about one thing, then it wanders off to a different idea.

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