Rating: 
Summary: Dancing on the edge.
Review: After hearing George Saunders' name mentioned alonside those of Denis Johnson, Tim O'Brien and Donald Barthelme, modern masters of the short story, I was suprised to find that he only had one small collection in print. After reading that one collection I was shocked to discover that George Saunders has more inborn talent than perhaps any other writer in America today. That he chooses to use that talent in the way he does, crafting edgy, disturbing tales of cultural corruption and alienation, bodes very well for the future of American letters.The collection draws its title from the first story in the book, probably the best story written by any American author in the last half of the 20th century. Describing the story with any brevity is an almost impossible task. Suffice it to say that it concerns a civil war style theme park director haunted by civil war era ghosts who hires a psychotic Vietnam veteran to rid the park of the gangs who keep invading the place and terrorizing the workers and visitors. This ludicrous story line is sharpened by Suanders' remarkable wit and spirals to a shocking and disturbing conclusion. Unfortunately, none of the remaining stories in the book equal the brilliance of the first, but none of them really disappoint the reader either. "Isabelle" is strangely moving and "The 400 Pound CEO" is a tragicomedy whose ending is so innevitable that it is almost painful to read. George Saunders from whom there is much to expect and he has the undeniable talent to back up those expectations.
Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag but worth the read
Review: As with any collection of short stories, some are better than others. Its a very dark collection, with crushing failure and abandonment of hope being the typical ending. With the exception of "Bounty" which is almost Sisyphean in its narrative, the stories are tight and enmesh the reader. Overall, the collection starts off strong with the first two stories an tapers off. To me its seems the later stories overly stress the theme of grinding down the main character and skimp on the little details that make the earlier stories more tangible.
Because of the unrelenting negativity thats present throughout this book, I agree with reviewer who advises it would be better to read only a story at a time and put the book down for a later date.
Rating:
Summary: The second time as farce.
Review: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders is David Sedaris's best collection of stories yet! To be fair, while Saunders writes prose exactly like Sedaris, has the same sense of humor as Sedaris, and exclusively writes characters as grotesques like Sedaris, he's also read some Phillip K. Dick, and his stories are glazed with a patina of sci-fi satire. The bizarre resulting effect keeps his essential lack of originality from being thoroughly appalling. And, to be fair, he came up at about the same time as Sedaris and almost surely didn't rip him off. I think it's this generation's post-Letterman sense of humor that's to blame for the proliferation of smug, dry wits on the literary scene, not anything so insidious as outright plagiarism. George Saunders isn't much of a revelation, but he's not a contemptible logokleptomaniacal word burglar either. High praise, huh? Print THAT next to the Pynchon quote on the book jacket.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad bosses and enslaved defectives people the millenium
Review: CivilWarLand in bad decline, by George Saunders, bespeaksscant hope for civilization as we rocket toward the millenium. In stories and a novella, Saunders paints anightmare world that, on minimal examination, turns out tobe nothing more than trends in America today taken to theirlogical conclusions. All of the stories are set in anindeterminate future dominated by antimoral entrepreneurswho gleefully exploit and discard their socio-economic andgenetic inferiors. With relentless, dead-on humorSaunders measures humanity's degradation threshold. Onlycharacters like "Mr Guilt," the 400-pound CEO, and the"flawed" guerilla Cole relieve the bleakness with theirrallying cry to the underclass: "enough already, enough, this is as low as I go."
Rating:
Summary: Five Stars, but it was close
Review: Fifteen pages in, I was fairly certain this would be one of the best short story collections I had ever read. That probably holds, although I was surprised to see, in Bounty and the title story especially, that Saunders often dropped the ball just before the wrap-up in each story. He lost control of the narrative, and it either got too dark, or too sentimental. 90% of the book is outstanding, though, and The 400lb CEO was worth the risk of walking nonchalantly out of the store with this slim volume invisibly tucked into the sleeve of my coat. Am I jesting? (Is he jesting?)
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyably bizarre and very humorous
Review: George Saunders is an excellent new writer in the vein of Denis Johnson ... he is funnier than Johnson, and not quite as wordy in my opinion. That being said, if you like Johnson, you'll like Saunders. The title story is probably the best in this collection, though I think the "400 Pound CEO" is a close second. Both of these stories have a cruel sense of irony, likeable characters who can't seem to get much right, and a wicked ending. There is a pattern to Saunders' work, but I've never found it monotonous because of the variety of events and turns of plot. If you're interested in very different fiction, then pick up this slim volume. Be prepared to laugh and be prepared to be more than a little disturbed.
Rating:
Summary: One-trick Pony... but it's a good trick.
Review: George Saunders seems able to write only about near-future corporate hell and decaying theme parks. And, he writes the same types of characters into each story. The main characters cannot act out their desires, because their desires place them outside the system. This makes them somewhat pitiful. The ones who can act out their desires within the system are objectionable because they are tailoring their desire to the system itself. Saunders has staked out for himself this part of the torture of modern life. In the hands of a less talented writer, this narrow focus of setting and character would be a drawback. The decayed settings and amoral characters of Donald Antrim's writings are similar, for example, but after a few Antrim stories, you see that there is no more depth than the surface chaos. Saunders seems able to find new depth in the souls of his characters every time he looks into them. In his work, each main character finds his own way out of the rat race. Oh, it also doesn't hurt that Saunders' writing is hilarious and highly readable.
Rating: 
Summary: Great ideas but poor narration
Review: George Saunders'prose rolls of the page slick and swiftly. Every one of these stories contains a fantastic and highly original Idea and mixes near future sci fi with elements of magic realism as each main protaganist confronts an existential problem in an insane world. So why not five stars? Nabokov said that a great storyteller should be an 'enchanter'and who could disagree? Saunders' plots work, I found myself able to suspend disbelief and the humour made me laugh often, these pieces are very inventive and insightful into the American Condition. Unfortunately for me, they were not very involving. The problem lies with his style of narration, I found that his lack of description and slow moments had me turning the pages fast, but upon finishing these stories I was left amused yet uncaring and feeling as though I had not been engrossed or 'taken in' - not enchanted. The reason for this is as I have mentioned, that these stroies are all action akin to the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, they keep you turning the pages so fast but overall, the resrained and unelaborate senences lack mood and atmosphere, I found it hard to fully put myself in the shoes and minds of the characters and imagine what the characters were going through. The world they inhabited was only ever partly convincing. Another gripe is that when stripped to the core, they are all essentially the same character facing the same problem. I'm English and the problem may be that this clipped, terse and minimalist style of prose has not, thankfully, caught on over here. Less is not allways more - try some of the shorter works by writers such as Will Self, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Poe, Maupassant, Peter Carey, Ballard - to name but a few - and see what I mean.
Rating:
Summary: so entirely worthwhile
Review: I had high expectations, and Saunders never let me down. Basically, he manages to pull off something I wouldn't believe without hearing about it: the combination of the quirky postmodern feel and the straightforward emotional tug of the "normal" short story. "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz" has an absurdist sci-fi premise and ends up as one of the more moving things I've read in recent memory, or even at all. I love my Pynchon and Wallace - I really do - but they rarely give me goosebumps, truth be known. CivilWarLand is hilarious and meaningful, and I highly recommend it. (Sentimentalists beware: this may be the gateway drug to your hardcore Gravity's Rainbow kind of thing. Use with caution.)
Rating:
Summary: An excellent collection of stories
Review: I initially discovered G. Saunders in the New Yorker via a short story entitled "The End of FIRPO in the World" -- taken from Pastoralia -- and became and instant fan. This is the first book of his short stories I bought, and shortly there after I also purchased Pastoralia, his second collection. Both are wonderfully written, dark and very funny without seeming repetitive or forced. His stories are some of the most original and fresh I've read by a contemporary author in a long while, and I've passed his books on to many friends.
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