Rating: 
Summary: Don't believe the hype!
Review: Apparently anyone looking on down to trash culture and throwing in enough vulgarity can get a great review these days. There are some genuinely funny moments, but overall these stories are as empty and unsatisfying as a can of E-Z Cheez.
Rating: 
Summary: Heart-breaking but amazing
Review: As in his first collection, George Saunders has put together a group of the most original and saddest stories that I have ever read. In Pastoralia, though, he explores more realistic characters and situations than in his previous book. I recommend Saunders highly to anyone who likes Vonnegut , O'Brien or Orwell.
Rating:
Summary: Bizarre, Grotesque, Absurd, and all too real!!!
Review: Comparisons with other writer's do not do justice to Mr. Saunders! His zany, laugh out loud, heart rending tales, are simply in a class of their own! And his stream of conscious narrations are about perfect! Take the bike riding boy in one tale. This youngster daydreams in a sci-fi world wishing for weird things to happen to his neighbors. How many other boys, and girls, have done the same, but who else can write about it like Mr. Saunders! Or the narrator of "The Falls", obsessed with his grown up neighbors, and wondering how to greet his odd "friend". Then Mr. Saunders reverses course, and into the mind of the frustrated artist antagonist, all the while sending a sly warning about two girls boating towrds the falls! There's the daydreaming barber with no toes, who lives with his mother, wondering about making the first move towards a beautiful, but awkwardly overbuilt, fellow student at a course for driver's caught speeding, not to mention the all too real instructor. Who would not want to be a student in this unique author's creative writing class?! The title tale also has its strange moments, as does the entire collection of a real original in contemporary writing!!
Rating:
Summary: Bizarre, Grotesque, Absurd, and all too real!!!
Review: Comparisons with other writer's do not do justice to Mr. Saunders! His zany, laugh out loud, heart rending tales, are simply in a class of their own! And his stream of conscious narrations are about perfect! Take the bike riding boy in one tale. This youngster daydreams in a sci-fi world wishing for weird things to happen to his neighbors. How many other boys, and girls, have done the same, but who else can write about it like Mr. Saunders! Or the narrator of "The Falls", obsessed with his grown up neighbors, and wondering how to greet his odd "friend". Then Mr. Saunders reverses course, and into the mind of the frustrated artist antagonist, all the while sending a sly warning about two girls boating towrds the falls! There's the daydreaming barber with no toes, who lives with his mother, wondering about making the first move towards a beautiful, but awkwardly overbuilt, fellow student at a course for driver's caught speeding, not to mention the all too real instructor. Who would not want to be a student in this unique author's creative writing class?! The title tale also has its strange moments, as does the entire collection of a real original in contemporary writing!!
Rating: 
Summary: Perverse and wickedly funny
Review: Contrary to misguided popular belief, some books you can tell by their covers. One glance at the jacket of George Saunders's new story collection, "Pastoralia" -- a plastic deer chained to a light post, with a thought-bubble containing a caveman -- and you know this is a seriously peculiar book and maybe an arrestingly original writer.He might be bizarre, but Saunders's first book, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," was a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award and a New York Times Notable Book. He's won three O. Henry Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and The New Yorker lists the Syracuse creative-writing professor among the 20 best American fiction writers under 40 -- all potentially a blessing or a curse to a writer who has a bright future spitting on media-driven appetites. But, just like in "Pastoralia," anti-heroes abound, even thrive, in the underbelly of modern America. Saunders is an odd one, but refreshing, nervy and outrageous. He could be a star.
Rating:
Summary: It is to laugh... and then feel really queasy
Review: Does this guy Saunders have a lock on the proto-futuristic-pre-wasteland-alternate-present-reality thing, or what? Is anything not made of plastic or human flesh in his world -- where the two seem as interchangeable as they are disposable? Do his characters not sport wounds that puss and spume but refuse to bleed? Just wow. His stories make the lower gut ache at the thought of what this consumerist culture of ours might render, once the oil's gone and we've completely lost the ability to tell good stories on film; and the way things are going, that's gonna be next year, folks...
Rating:
Summary: It is to laugh... and then feel really queasy
Review: Does this guy Saunders have a lock on the proto-futuristic-pre-wasteland-alternate-present-reality thing, or what? Is anything not made of plastic or human flesh in his world -- where the two seem as interchangeable as they are disposable? Do his characters not sport wounds that puss and spume but refuse to bleed? Just wow. His stories make the lower gut ache at the thought of what this consumerist culture of ours might render, once the oil's gone and we've completely lost the ability to tell good stories on film; and the way things are going, that's gonna be next year, folks...
Rating:
Summary: Less about rising above life than living it
Review: Dystopic and funny, with only a glimmer of hope. That is George Saunders to me. His protagonists are often shown laboring on in a continuing struggle to exist, seemingly fruitlessly as in Pastoralia, but not always, as in The Falls. This collection starts with two very strong stories, Pastoralia and Winky.
The first-person narrative in Pastoralia is superbly written. The nameless protagonist could be anyone - is anyone. Man is rarely an island unto himself and Saunder's chooses to tell the story at the intersection of two lives in a selfish, cyclic struggle to cope with problems. Winky was the first story in some time to make me laugh out loud. It pokes fun at those positive thinking take-hold-of-your-life seminars that litter late-night television infomercials. And it is funny, funny, funny. But it is also about a co-dependent relationship whose hopeless shackles are not just a little sad. The rest of the stories are weaker, less powerful.
Sea Oak was not only my least favorite it left me wondering just what the point was. The dead aunt come-back-to-live-the-life-she-wasn't-able-to does not ring true. It was more bizarre than meaningful. The Fall, the last story, seemed more like a bone tossed out to end everything on a positive, hopeful note. It felt rushed and as a result seemed less credible than most of the others.
The stories seem less about real change in the protagonists than about, "this is life and its unfair, scary, messy, and often hopeless." And one, The End of FIRPO in the World, even seems less like a story than a scene or vignette. I enjoyed reading the stories, but I am glad the book stopped at six - perhaps because they strike so close to home without providing much real hope for change.
Rating:
Summary: Comic, Original, Shattering
Review: Every so often I read a book that shakes me to the bottom of whatever's in me. This is such a book. The title story still has me quaking; I saw the human race in every sentence and had to laugh and mourn. Sea Oak has lines that are howlers, but it's also terrible and touching. Here is a voice as original and truthful as Flannery O' Connor and Franz Kafka. George Saunders portrays our disgrace with great compassion and comic sensibility. This is enlightened writing. Thank you, Mr Saunders.
Rating:
Summary: Suddenly my own life doesn't seem so bad...
Review: George Saunder's new short story collection is what my grandpa would refer to as a "hoot." It's been a while since I laughed out loud at a book the way I did at this one. It started out as a few snickers, but soon I was laughing so hard I had to set the book aside and calm down a bit. PASTORALIA is populated by the sort of absurd losers one might find in, say, a Tom Waits song. I know I won't soon forget the Neanderthal-impersonators of the title story, decomposing Aunt Bernie of "Sea Oak," or the fellow who may be the world's most miserable barber (having no toes is the least of this guy's problems). This is likely not a book for everyone. But if your sense of humor tends toward the dark and absurd, I think you'll truly enjoy it.
|
