Tenth of December is a stunning achievement. I am now of the view that if everybody read a George Saunders story per day, the world would be a far better place.

First, the content of the stories: there are a lot of children and families here living in a world imbued with classic Americana (although sometimes starkly twisted and dystopian, especially in the case of “The Semplica Girl Diaries”). Many of the stories deal with moral ambiguity, and characters try their best to be good people. In the opening story, “Victory Lap,” the main characters are (1) a naïve young girl who sees the world as a safe, happy place, and (2) a young boy facing restrictions imposed by his own family. He violates familial restrictions in order to save the life of the young girl, and he is all the better for it.

The closing story, “Tenth of December,” does similar work. The two characters are a young boy who lives in a fantastical imaginal world and a middle-aged men diagnosed with terminal cancer. On a cold winter day, the man decides to freeze himself to death on a frozen hill, but the boy sees him without his coat. In an attempt to save the man from freezing, the boy falls into a frozen lake and nearly dies. However, the middle-aged man finds a new lease on life: his life matters, he is not a burden, and small actions can make an enormous difference to other people.

These themes appear in nearly all of Saunders’ stories: so many people are trying to do small things that help others. In “Escape from Spiderhead,” for instance, the protagonist chooses to suffer–ultimately committing suicide to save other people, although they have committed heinous crimes in the past.

Saunders’ work is a celebration of human goodness, and it is an affirmation that we, too, can make a huge difference on the world.

However, Saunders also recognizes that morality is complicated. Sometimes, good acts have devastating consequences, and we must determine whether we are willing to accept this. In “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” the protagonist and his family are attempting to keep up with the standard of living held by neighbors. Fortunately, the father wins the lottery, and invests money in “semplica girls”: women who sold themselves to get out of horrible situations, but are now mere decorative furniture on peoples’ lawns. One of the daughters frees the semplica girls, which throws the family into a debt crisis. Even so, she–in her naïveté–saved the lives of these young women.

“My Chivalric Fiasco” tells the story of a young man who witnesses his colleague get raped by their boss. The boss buys their silence by promoting the two of them, and the young woman prefers to accept these circumstance. However, the young man takes a potion that forces him to act in a chivalric manner (much like romanticized depictions of knights in the old days). To save his colleague’s honor, he publicly accuses their boss of the rape, and is promptly beaten and fired. The woman is horrified, as they all live in a tiny town, and her husband will be devastated by this news. The protagonist, then, acts in an admirable way, but the consequences are severe.

In spite of the the collection’s thematic seriousness, the writing style of the text is captivating. Saunders unites literary text with everyday, millennial humor. The text shifts between lofty prose and the way we actually talk in everyday life. Doing so makes the book profoundly funny. I quote, from “My Chivalric Fiasco”:

‘Twas true: Gossip & Slander did indeed Fly like the Wind in our Town, and would, for sure, reach the Ear of poor dumbfuck Nate soon withal. And finding himself thus cruelly inform’d of the Foul Violation of his Martha, Nate would definitely freak.

Oh, man.

What a shit day.

Saunders uses different characters in order to provide drastically different linguistic environments, and the use of language here collides in an incredible manner. It’s uplifting, energetic, and refuses to be caught up in past linguistic conventions. Significantly, the way Saunders uses language isn’t mere rebellion: the man can write some incredible sentences.

Altogether, Tenth of December is a collection with some of the greatest contemporary short stories, and it is a must-read for anyone curious about what modern literature can do.