Tenth of December

1) "From across the woods, as if by common accord, birds left their trees and darted upward. I joined them, flew among them, they did not recognize me as something apart from them, and I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would."

2) "We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us."

3) "Oh, God, what a beautiful world! The autumn colors, that glinting river, that lead-colored cloud pointing down like a rounded arrow at that half-remodeled McDonald's standing above I-90 like a castle."

4) "Yeah, right. Like any of that was happening. Like he was racing back. They'd see through him. They'd fry his ass. People were always seeing through him and frying his ass. When he'd stolen Kirk Desner's flip-downs, the kids on the team had seen through him and fried his ass. The time he'd cheated on Syl, Syl had seen through him, broken off their engagement, and cheated on him with Charles, which had fried his ass possibly worse than any single other ass frying he'd ever had, in a life that, it recently seemed, was simply a series of escalating ass fries."

5) "So goodnight to all future generations. Please know I was a person like you, I too breathed air and tensed legs while trying to sleep and, when writing with pencil, sometimes brought pencil to nose to smell."

6) "I took me to the Banks of the River, and tarried there awhile, as the lowering Sun made one with the Water, giving generously of Itself & its Divers Colors, in a Splay of Magnificence that preceded a most wonderful Silence."

7) "Yes, Suzanne said. We also have a pool. You should come over this summer. It's cool if you swim with your shirt on. And also, yes to there being something to us. You are by far the most insightful boy in our class. Even when I take into consideration the boys I knew in Montreal, I am just like: No one can compare."

The short stories included in this book were collected together about ten years ago. I noticed one thematic link between some of the stories: main characters who have active lives of the imagination coupled with a difficult attitude towards authority. Also, two of the stories feature psychoactive drugs administered to the protagonist to produce bizarre behavior. Some of the stories seem to be set in a world slightly different from the one we recognize, usually not for the better. The author takes care to put the characters through difficulties with little chances of rescue by an indifferent society around them, which pulls us right into their emotional world. The reader spends a lot of time inside the thoughts of the viewpoint characters as they muddle though whatever predicament they find themselves in.

I really enjoyed the stories and the way the author worked to ennoble characters who exhibited weakness either of intellect or moral quality, living close to the edge of a society. I listened to the audiobook version of this, read by Saunders himself. I think this enhanced the sense of intimacy with the characters he wrote about. The way a story turned out was not obvious from its first few minutes.