Liberation Day is a collections of short stories that feel very fresh and new. Each story is unique and sometimes hard to grasp whats going on. But certainly these stories explore new frontiers in fiction.
I was not a fan of all of these stories but two that I personally thought were excellent are the title story Liberation Day and the story Mother’s Day.
Liberation Day reminds me of some of the speculative fiction work of Kazuo Ishiguro. You are dropped in this world that is very familiar to our current world but from the view point of some one in that world that is very foreign to us. You understand immediately that something is different about this world but it takes the entire story to piece together what it is.
Mother’s Day is a story that I felt I could really relate to. Not that I am a mother but I could empathize with how she reacted to the world. The emotions and the thinking that Saunders gave her is something we all go through. He writes in such a way that dives into her mindset and brings into all the levels of her thinking.
Overall I would say this book is worth while reading if you are looking for some fresh and original fiction. My copy of the book is also quite special, I bought it after watching George Saunders receive the 2023 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and give a talk on his writing life at the National Book Festival. And after the talk I was able to have my copy signed by George Saunders himself!
