Rating: 
Summary: Arcadia Ego
Review: One of the most compassionate, quirky, and incandescent books I have read, Pastoralia is on my short list of all-time favorites. `Sea Oak' alone is worth the price of admission. My compliments to George Saunders for having written it.
Rating:
Summary: Arcadia Ego
Review: One of the most compassionate, quirky, and incandescent books I have read, Pastoralia is on my short list of all-time favorites. 'Sea Oak' alone is worth the price of admission. My compliments to George Saunders for having written it.
Rating: 
Summary: For pure entertainment
Review: Pastoralia is a wonderful collection of imaginative, satirical, and often ridiculous short stories. Saunders imagination knows no bounds and he successfully makes the most unreal scenarios seem real. But he often fails to put characters into these scenarios that we can really relate to - they are quite often characatures, just as ridiculous as their environment and as a result left me feeling unmoved by many of the stories. (There are exceptions - The Falls for example is very moving.) Many of these short pieces are nothing more than some very well made, very sweet candy - very enjoyable at the moment but soon forgotten. I suppose that's not really a criticism unless you are looking for some life-changing piece of literature - for pure entertainment you would be hard pressed to find anything better than Pastoralia.
Rating:
Summary: America Deluxe
Review: Reading this book is like watching a trashy TV talk show on really good acid. Saunders is the best antidote to the boring writers of today, those writers who think that a carefully-rendered quiet story is enough. Besides, at one point, we're all going to be asked to show our cocks.
Rating:
Summary: SAUNDERS; TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY
Review: Saunders is back with a new collection and shows no sign of slacking. There are some great stories published here in this collection (many of them previously published in the New Yorker). If you don't already know Saunders, I envy you your moment of discovery. This literary genius's work pulled the proverbial rug out from under my feet the first time I read such stories of his as "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" and "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror." In this collection, "Sea Oak," "Winky," and the title story stand out as exemplary contemporary fictions. Buy this book! and buy _CivilWarLand in Bad Decline_ if you haven't already!
Rating:
Summary: I'm this close to a fifth star
Review: Saunders's newest collection of short stories is far better than any new fiction I've read recently, including Thom Jones's latest collection. His stories are full of irony and wit, but unlike many of his contemporaries, Saunders does not constantly undercut himself or avoid sentiment. He might best be labeled a satirist (for lack of a better category)-- a sort of Mark Twain for the 21st century. He lampoons theme parks, corporate doublespeak, humiliating jobs, reality television, and functional illiteracy with striking precision, and does so in an original way. His stories are deeply touching at the same time, often evoking the 'quiet desperation' of a character in Joyce's Dubliners. So why not five stars? Somehow, there seem to be a few bugs in Saunders's voice-- ones I'm sure will be worked out within a book or two. He some times tries to hard to be 'new' or 'interesting' and interferes with the flow of his stories. For example, in The Barber's Unhappiness and in The Falls, he tends to take the free-association run-on sentence a little too far. This has been done before, and it isn't an effective device. No big complaints though. The title story is especially wonderful. ( I also want to reccomend a story not in this collection called I Can Speak™, which I think was reprinted in his first collection).
Rating:
Summary: Wow, was I surprised by how good this was.
Review: So I looked at the cover and at the authors picture, and I made a general assessment of how funny I thought this book would be. Holy [crud]! Each of the stories has a measured out funny/painfully dark and sad balance which I found just thrilling. What a great measure of the American character.
Rating:
Summary: Looking for happiness in all the usual, wrong places
Review: The first story in this book, the title story, grabbed me immediately. I laughed aloud, delighted at the inventiveness of Saunders' depiction of the corporate culture, as seen through the eyes of a poor working stiff in the pre-historic-land exhibit of a theme park. And really, be it a cubicle or a cave, corporate jargon or grunts and gestures, the author reinforces a universal truth: we are a flawed species, and when pressed, we default to some very strange, very typical behavior. His characters are both bizarre and entirely recognizable: so many hapless, imperfect souls stuck in an even more imperfect world, trying to find happiness in spite of themselves--even, in one case, in spite of being dead. As Pogo was known to say, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Saunders' sense of humor elevates our mundane dance with discontent to a charming, hilarious, sad, familiar but refreshing jig. Susan O'Neill
Author: Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam (Ballantine Books, 2001)
Rating:
Summary: the best bad metaphors
Review: The satirical Pastoralia will cause you to harass your book-reading circle, reciting countless excerpts, promising that each will be the last you read aloud - that is until you turn the page and realize the next page is just as funny and cannot be left out.
If you read this book in public, Saunders will embarrass you as you laugh out loud at one bad metaphor after another from a man devouring his enchilada "as if it is alive and he doesn't want to wake it" to your friends and family "crapping it your oatmeal."
So here you go, but don't read all the six short stories in one sitting - let each provide you with its own break from reality.
Rating: 
Summary: ...a dark and inventive new voice...
Review: The short story format has always been the poor cousin of the novel but Saunders makes a good case for the genre with this strong collection. His dark take on life is a welcome one and Pastoralia contains some very good stories each of which come at you from slightly left of centre. What he manages to do very well is to create a novel-sized reality within the shorter confines of the story. Characters are well developed with just enough background information or subtle fleshing out to leave you with the sense that they exist beyond the story itself. Eschewing a beginning/middle/end in the conventional sense Saunders presents the reader with a slice of life within which there lies the elements of a good yarn. Having read all the above you may wonder why I have only given the book 3 stars. Well it is good - blackly humorous, inventive etc. - but it isn't great. It is a good read and one of the best story collections I have read in a while but it didn't quite have the spark to take it to the 'essential reading' level. It was good enough though to make me want to check out his earlier collection. This is a writer with potential and one to follow. If you have read and enjoyed this book then you would almost centainly like the two collections from Dan Rhodes - Anthropology and Don't Tell Me The Truth About Love. I prefer the former but the latter is perhaps closest in style and content to Pastoralia. (By the way - the UK cover for this book is much better)
| 
