The Stay-In Weather Sale: 20% off select books
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Award Winners
    • Signed Editions
    • Digital Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • Book Club Subscriptions
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Read Rise Resist Gear
    • Journals & Notebooks
    • Games
    • Socks
  • Sell Books
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store
McAfee Secure

Don't Miss

  • Looking Forward Sale
  • The Stay-In Weather Sale
  • Indiespensable 90:
    My Year Abroad
  • Our 2021 TBR List
  • Powell's Virtual Events
  • Oregon Battle of the Books

Visit Our Stores


Powell's Books: You'll Want to Bookmark This Page: 37 of Our Most Anticipated Books for Spring and Summer 2021 (1 comment)
The Powell’s purchasing team is here to share their most anticipated new releases for Spring and Summer 2021...
Read More»
  • Emily B.: Black History Month 2021: Black Women in Science (0 comment)
  • Rhianna Walton: Black History Month 2021: Rethinking the Classics (0 comment)

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

Tenth of December: Stories

by George Saunders
Tenth of December: Stories

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780812984255
ISBN10: 0812984250
Condition: Standard


All Product Details

View Larger ImageView Larger Images
$10.95
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Cart
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
2Cedar Hills

From Powells.com

Powell's Short List: Best Story Collections of the 21st Century (So Far)

Staff Pick

Clever, nuanced, and weird, Tenth of December is a short story collection that manages to venture into uncomfortable places in a very entertaining way. Saunders explores questions of morality and personal responsibility with a lightness of touch and an irresistible charm — while he may create narrators that seem shortsighted or foolish at times, he clearly has affection for all his characters. Standouts in the collection include "Victory Lap," following two adolescent kids whose fight or flight reactions get put to the test, "Home," a heart-wrenching portrait of a shell-shocked veteran, and the dystopian tale "Escape from Spiderhead." Recommended By Renee P., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

National Book Award Finalist • Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year By The New York Times Book Review

Includes an extended conversation with David Sedaris

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In “Home,” a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill — the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December — through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit — not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.”

Review

“The best book you’ll read this year.” The New York Times Magazine

Review

“A feat of inventiveness....This eclectic collection never ceases to delight with its at times absurd, surreal, and darkly humorous look at very serious subjects....George Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time.” Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner

Review

“The best short-story writer in English — not ‘one of,’ not ‘arguably,’ but the Best.” Mary Karr, Time

Review

“A visceral and moving act of storytelling....No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchised.” Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Review

“Saunders’s startling, dreamlike stories leave you feeling newly awakened to the world.” People

Review

“It’s no exaggeration to say that short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction.” The Wall Street Journal

About the Author

MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow George Saunders is the acclaimed author of several collections of short stories, including Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, as well as a collection of essays and a book for children. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

5 1

What Our Readers Are Saying

Share your thoughts on this title!
Average customer rating 5 (1 comments)

`
Weems , September 12, 2020 (view all comments by Weems)
I haven't read a collection of stories that engaged me so much in a long time. As proof of my engagement, I must admit that I wasn't wholly thrilled when reading the first three stories, but when I got to "Escape from Spiderhead," my antennae got cranked up to 11 (Also, I must admit this is my first Saunders [for shame, for shame, I know]), and when the rest of the collection stunned me consistently onward from there, I went back and read the first three stories over again, feeling that I must have missed something. Rarely does an author's confidence and authority have me rethinking my own initial reactions so quickly. And I proved myself right. I HAD indeed read the first few with nowhere near the level of attention these stories deserved. Saunders is not only a master of creating sci-fi worlds that insist to us that they must be familiar, but he is wondrous at the dual- (or tryptic-) perspective to show us the truth of characters, as sorrowful or laughable as they may be. "Spiderhead" was by far my favorite, but there is no doubting the power of ANY story in here. I'm sold.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment




Product Details

ISBN:
9780812984255
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
01/07/2014
Publisher:
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Pages:
288
Height:
.76IN
Width:
5.25IN
Thickness:
1.00
Author:
George Saunders
Subject:
Stories (single author)
Subject:
Literature-A to Z

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$10.95
List Price:$17.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
2Cedar Hills

More copies of this ISBN

  • New, Trade Paperback, $17.00
  • Used, Trade Paperback, Starting from $7.50
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Sitemap
  • © 2021 POWELLS.COM Terms

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##