Tenth of December, George Saunders, 2013

Tenth of December Review

Tenth of December by George Saunders is a collection of short stories that mix compassion with formal play. Published in 2013, it looks at ordinary people in strange settings: experimental drugs, corporate mazes, frozen ponds, and minds under pressure. For you, this book offers humor wrapped around heartbreak and sentences that move like quicksilver.

Overview

Saunders builds worlds with a few tilted details: invented jargon, skewed policies, voices that reveal systems by how they break people. You will notice how empathy leads: even the bleakest stories push toward mercy. The title story closes the book on a note of grace that feels earned.

Summary

Standouts include Victory Lap, where two teens fight cowardice and fear in real time, and Escape from Spiderhead, where language itself becomes an instrument of control. The Semplica Girl Diaries uses a parent’s stressed voice to reveal a nightmare of status and exploitation. In Tenth of December, a boy and a dying man meet on the ice and choose each other over despair. Across the book, experiments fail, systems hum, and people try to stay kind inside bad weather.

Author

George Saunders writes with comic timing and moral seriousness. He experiments without losing the human thread. You benefit from voices that feel lived in and from structures that surprise without showing off.

Key Themes

You will explore dignity under pressure, the ethics of control, and the possibility of grace in small acts. You will see how language shapes reality and how stories can heal by naming harm.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: inventive forms, deep empathy, and endings that ring. Weaknesses: the tonal shifts and invented idioms can challenge readers who prefer traditional realism. Overall: a humane, inventive collection that lingers.

Target Audience

Ideal for readers who like contemporary short fiction, social satire with a heart, and formal experiments that still land emotionally. Great for discussion about ethics and narrative voice.

Favorite Quotes

Short lines land: be kind anyway, systems speak through us, mercy changes math. They carry the collection’s warmth.

Takeaways

For you, the key takeaway is that kindness is not naive. In a world of incentives and scripts, choosing mercy is radical and practical at once.