Will I love Liberation Day?

The stories are so funny and humane and poignant and shocking and entertaining and compassionate and surprising, all at the same time. Who doesn't love George Saunders? He has become one of our great literary figures. Importantly, I believe he is also a nice man. I think this because of interviews and lectures I have seen him give. Also, a sense of decency--coupled with wild humor and some adolescent silliness--runs through his writing.

I love how George Saunders creates really weird alternate realities, but doesn’t make a big deal about it.

In Liberation Day, we learn about the inner lives of people who seem to be enslaved by being “pinioned” to a wall after they’ve been programmed to perform as storytellers for their owners. Because we’re learning about this world from the pinioned narrator, we are not subjected to any lecturing or moralizing about the situation.

Instead, we hear about his romantic yearning for his owner’s wife, and that’s the tension around which the story is built. He only gives us the details… show more.