I hadn't heard of George Saunders (here in the UK we don't seem to be big short story readers or promoters) until his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo came out a week or two ago. That's getting a lot of attention, but I decided to start with this collection of ten stories. Some of them I absolutely loved: Victory Lap (the first in the book), Escape from Spiderhead (my favourite for its inventiveness), The Semplica Girl Diaries (funny and awful at the same time), and Tenth of December (moving, thoughtful). These four were the longest in the book, and a couple of the shorter ones really didn't work for me: Sticks, and My Chivalric Fiasco.

But on the basis that four of the stories in this book were near perfect, I'd say read it. Saunders is inventive, funny, sad, and interesting.

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