What a great collection of short stories. Saunders is able to create more complexity in a character in a few pages than most people can in hundreds. His characters tend to be ordinary Americans, usually working frivolous jobs, struggling with some minor flaw of their character. The titular story is particularly interesting, in which a man and woman live the lives of cave people for a museum/zoo exhibit as their job, both funny and a critique on capitalism. The stories are typically straightforward with a few quirks and humorous, even when the outcome is sad. His strength by far though is character. I don’t think you would ever want to be any of the people in these tales, but you still hope for good for them. I wasn’t crazy about Saunders novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” so I am glad I read this collection and will have to revisit Lincoln to see if it strikes me differently. I’ll definitely be reading more of his short story collections.