Rating: 
Summary: Not your standard pastorals
Review: I strongly recommend George Saunders's fiction to anyone that enjoys cynicism dished up with a dollop of hope. The six stories contained in this book are for those who like their stories dark and comical. Here you will find folks living in a theme-park cave for money, a dead aunt returning from the grave to get what she feels she deserved in life, hyper-critical barbers, and hateful children. Despite all of the depressing characters that one visits while reading this book, the stories resonate because of their humanity and occasional acts of selflessness. Saunders's characters are at their best when they drop their egoism, realize their unhappiness, and address it via minute or drastic means. The gratifying part about all of this is that you become the character telling each of the stories - thinking their thoughts and seeing the world through their first-person narratives. This recurring theme gives the stories a voyeuristic quality that is highly engaging. Read this book in as few sittings as possible - you will not be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Read it one sitting
Review: I thought that CivilWarLand in Bad Decline was a modern and different take on the societal pressures we put on ourselves today, but I was simply in tears with this book. Very rarely do I read a book in one sitting, but this one notable exception. My only regret is that it seems the stories cut short just one or two pages short, leaving the reader thirsting for more. But I suppose that is the mark of a great writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Losers & Whiners learn to Hope
Review: I was stuck on a plane with no other book to read or I would never have finished this one. The first story of people as theme park exhibits reminded me of Star Trek episode with Orwellian overtones. You can only save yourself by betraying others, and the life you are saving yourself for is probably not worth the self laothing. Perhaps the stories are well written, but the themes are so off-putting that they detract from any enjoyment.
Rating: 
Summary: Very unsatisfying
Review: I was very close to giving this book only 2 stars because of the overall feeling I got, but actually I enjoyed "Winky" and "The Falls" a bit. The rest, however, lack something significant that Saunders *did* have is his last collection, "Civilwarland in Bad Decline". In his last collection, the characters were pitiful, unlucky, or otherwise sad. Yet there was a sense, by the end of each story, that somehow that didn't matter, somehow there was something beautiful and redeeming to be found. "Winky" and "The Falls" continue this to a certain degree, but stories like "Pastoralia" do not. In fact, "Pastoralia" left me incredibly unsatisfied. It is a completely opposite idea from the stories in his last collection. Many people seem to like "Sea Oak", especially the decomposing Aunt, but I fail to see why. To me, the returned Aunt is completely unconvincing as a character. It's as if Saunders wanted her completely selfish (wanting sex, her insistence that "I got nothing"), and yet also completely concerned for her family (wanting to save Troy). Instead of, say, making this a personal conflict within the Aunt, he tries to make the two feelings compatable. I don't buy it. One last thing to note: the stories are very funny. Much more so than his last work. But, unfortunately, I don't think that makes up for the lack of beauty and goodness.
Rating:
Summary: Great stories, but I'd already read them all
Review: If you want to know where short story writing is at the moment, then you have to read this collection by one of the genres stars. The stories read like a perfect combination of TC Boyle and David Foster Wallace, though, underneath, there seems to be more humanity in Saunders writing than in either of the arguably more famous writers' works. A MAJOR WARNING, though: All of the stories in this collection appeared in The New Yorker. I bought the book thinking I'd find at least four new stories, but I found only small changes-- and I'm not sure they made the stories better. This really bugged me, and, as enjoyable as the collection was, I wondered if the stories didn't read better in the pages of The New Yorker, seperated from each other by a few issues .... The stories are excellent, but the collection brings nothing new to the table, and brings nothing more from the stories.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth Distilled
Review: If you've ever felt valueless as an employee/citizen....you're not alone. Saunders exposes how earnestly we pursue our livings in a Capitalist system so devoid of humanism that it becomes HILARIOUS and sick at the same time. Who holds the moral high ground in a work system so incredibly shallow, meaningless, and empty...those who resist?...or those who comply? This book makes you wonder why we're all so enthusiastic about the work ethic when we are valued only as consumers. I tell my friends to quit worrying about who stole their cheese...and start reading Pastoralia.
Rating:
Summary: Losers & Whiners learn to Hope
Review: In his short story collection Pastoralia, George Saunders guides us through alternately self-pitying, self-aggrandizing, self-castigating, self-deceptive, and simultaneously self-aware selves. His characters often live grotesquely pathetic lives: a middle-aged worker on a computer company factory line who longs to get rid of the mildly retarded sister he cared for, a male stripper who is rated by his customers as somewhere between "Honeypie" and "Adequate" and lives in the projects with his two malopriating sisters and self-abnegating aunt, a fat, hateful little boy constantly mocked by his mother and step-father, a barber born without toes who is tortured by his inability to see beyond the physical imperfections of the women in his life. Almost all male, often adults still living with their mothers, self-identified lifelong losers, Saunders' characters brood on past injustices and failures and, more often than not, show themselves unable to break the patterns that have stalled their lives.
These are comic tales, though not, in my view, of the laugh-out loud kind. They are darkly, even bitterly, ironic, and though Saunders sometimes tempers his irony with redeeming moments of pathos, his world is generally one in which mean spiritedness rules the day. Whether the storyteller, himself, is guilty of such mean spiritedness or whether he merely documents it, is difficult to say. One can detect a certain degree of affection toward these characters in the narrative voice, but there is also a little disdain. This ironic detachment is, perhaps, what marks these tales as postmodernist. I am reminded not so much of Pynchon as of Don DeLillo, so that if you like the latter writer, I suspect you will enjoy Saunders.
I, myself, am not a fan of this brand of postmodernism. Ultimately, such writers in my view construct mere caricatures-highly complex, sophisticated caricatures, but caricatures nonetheless. If you are more humanist than postmodernist, I think you will find these tales to be interesting, but limited, explorations of our psychic warts.
One more thing. I haven't discussed the first story in the collection which gives the book its name. I did read it, but I found it so alienating I almost did not continue on to the other stories. Set either in the near future or in some alternate dimension of the present, "Pastoralia" is the story of a man who earns his living by serving as a live exhibit in some kind of historical theme park. Hired to be a Neanderthal, his job requires him literally to live in a cave, mimicking the daily activities of our prehistoric ancestors for sporadic visitors. He finds himself caught between the demands of a woman partner who refuses to remain in character and an exploitative management that appears to be running the theme park into the ground. It's an imaginative plot, but I found the execution tedious and unrewarding. So, my advice to the reader is not to skip this story, but simply to be patient. If feel like your slogging through it like I did, don't toss away the book. There are better things to come. BTW, in looking over the other reviews, I see that I am among a tiny, tiny minority. Nearly everyone else gives Saunders five stars and lauds him as hilarious, insightful, and original. Maybe I have a def ear to this kind of satire, but I found all of these raves to be hyperbolic. One of the few other reviewers who is critical of this collection suggests that Saunders appeals distinctly to men. She may have a point. Maybe Saunders cynicism is more male oriented. I also suspect though, that he appeals to many readers because he enables them to feel smart and superior not only to the consistently pathetic protagonists but also to the moronic demands of the society that they live in. I'm no big defender of the status quo, but I'm afraid I just don't see the world as quite so stupid as these stories portray it, and so I don't take any joy from the collection's social critique. The barbs aimed at the social order are undoubtedly clever, but they are hardly subtle.
Rating:
Summary: If you like Dellilo, climb aboard, if not, think twice.
Review: In his short story collection Pastoralia, George Saunders guides us through alternately self-pitying, self-aggrandizing, self-castigating, self-deceptive, and simultaneously self-aware selves. His characters often live grotesquely pathetic lives: a middle-aged worker on a computer company factory line who longs to get rid of the mildly retarded sister he cared for, a male stripper who is rated by his customers as somewhere between "Honeypie" and "Adequate" and lives in the projects with his two malopriating sisters and self-abnegating aunt, a fat, hateful little boy constantly mocked by his mother and step-father, a barber born without toes who is tortured by his inability to see beyond the physical imperfections of the women in his life. Almost all male, often adults still living with their mothers, self-identified lifelong losers, Saunders' characters brood on past injustices and failures and, more often than not, show themselves unable to break the patterns that have stalled their lives.
These are comic tales, though not, in my view, of the laugh-out loud kind. They are darkly, even bitterly, ironic, and though Saunders sometimes tempers his irony with redeeming moments of pathos, his world is generally one in which mean spiritedness rules the day. Whether the storyteller, himself, is guilty of such mean spiritedness or whether he merely documents it, is difficult to say. One can detect a certain degree of affection toward these characters in the narrative voice, but there is also a little disdain. This ironic detachment is, perhaps, what marks these tales as postmodernist. I am reminded not so much of Pynchon as of Don DeLillo, so that if you like the latter writer, I suspect you will enjoy Saunders.
I, myself, am not a fan of this brand of postmodernism. Ultimately, such writers in my view construct mere caricatures-highly complex, sophisticated caricatures, but caricatures nonetheless. If you are more humanist than postmodernist, I think you will find these tales to be interesting, but limited, explorations of our psychic warts.
One more thing. I haven't discussed the first story in the collection which gives the book its name. I did read it, but I found it so alienating I almost did not continue on to the other stories. Set either in the near future or in some alternate dimension of the present, "Pastoralia" is the story of a man who earns his living by serving as a live exhibit in some kind of historical theme park. Hired to be a Neanderthal, his job requires him literally to live in a cave, mimicking the daily activities of our prehistoric ancestors for sporadic visitors. He finds himself caught between the demands of a woman partner who refuses to remain in character and an exploitative management that appears to be running the theme park into the ground. It's an imaginative plot, but I found the execution tedious and unrewarding. So, my advice to the reader is not to skip this story, but simply to be patient. If feel like your slogging through it like I did, don't toss away the book. There are better things to come. BTW, in looking over the other reviews, I see that I am among a tiny, tiny minority. Nearly everyone else gives Saunders five stars and lauds him as hilarious, insightful, and original. Maybe I have a def ear to this kind of satire, but I found all of these raves to be hyperbolic. One of the few other reviewers who is critical of this collection suggests that Saunders appeals distinctly to men. She may have a point. Maybe Saunders cynicism is more male oriented. I also suspect though, that he appeals to many readers because he enables them to feel smart and superior not only to the consistently pathetic protagonists but also to the moronic demands of the society that they live in. I'm no big defender of the status quo, but I'm afraid I just don't see the world as quite so stupid as these stories portray it, and so I don't take any joy from the collection's social critique. The barbs aimed at the social order are undoubtedly clever, but they are hardly subtle.
Rating: 
Summary: Theme parks in bad decline
Review: It's hard to tell if George Saunders' worldview is relentlessly bleak, or if he's creating bleak worlds to show us that ours isn't so bad. His characters are trapped in situations that are infinitely escapable -- or perhaps they're not. There's also a curious religious component to these tales. The lead story, "Pastoralia," repeats Saunders' obsession with fake theme parks. Although the stories here don't have quite the same impact as in "CivilWarLand," they still bring you face to face with your own life choices and your own, dare I say it, whining about life. Evaluation forms figure prominently in these stories as well.
Rating:
Summary: Inventive, imaginative and touching
Review: Let me add this to the previous glowing reviews: first, don't be scared off as I was by comparisons to other authors (for me it was Pynchon) - George Saunders has a unique style, but it's very readable and approachable. And for the superficially strange settings, these stories are incredibly touching - Binky and title story get at the complexity and frailty of human behavior in a way few do. I'm currently reading his previous collection (CivilWarLand In Bad Decline) and it's similarly good, but the gold he struck there has been refined to perfection here. Worth the bucks.
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