Tenth of December: Stories
US release cover
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| Author | George Saunders |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short story collection |
| Publisher | Random House |
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Publication date
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January 8, 2013 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 208 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 785558855 |
| Preceded by | In Persuasion Nation |
| Followed by | Lincoln in the Bardo |
Tenth of December is a collection of short stories by American author George Saunders. It includes stories published in various magazines between 1995 and 2009. Tenth of December was published on January 8, 2013, by Random House. One of the stories, "Home," was a 2011 Bram Stoker Award finalist. The book was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review. The collection won the 2013 Story Prize for short-story collections and the inaugural (2014) Folio Prize.
A young girl named Alison is kidnapped three days before her birthday. Kyle, a boy who lives nearby whose parents enforce very strict household rules, sees the event unfold and must decide whether to help Alison (who used to be his friend but stopped hanging out with him after becoming popular) or to ignore the situation to keep himself safe.
A father has a tall pole in the front yard that he constantly decorates for holidays. His child recounts life with his dad and how the man eventually lost his sanity after his wife died and began to decorate the pole in bizarre ways.
Two women, Marie and Callie, lead very different lives. Marie has a happy but cluttered life with her husband, whom she loves, and her children. They have a very messy home and constantly adopt pets. Callie has a different life. She has a husband whose job is to sell animals like kittens and puppies to people. When they are not sold, he kills them and moves on to the next sale. Callie wants nothing more than to please him, so she accepts this behavior. She also has a son, Bo, who runs away and darts in between cars on the interstate. In order to keep him safe, she chains him to a tree like a dog in the backyard. She sees this as a way to keep him from escaping, because he loves it outside and hates it in the house. The two women meet when Callie tries to sell one of her husband's puppies to Marie's family, her neighbors. Marie's children love it and Marie wants to make them happy so usually accepts and buys an animal, but after seeing Bo out the window chained to a tree, she decides against it and the puppy's fate is later decided by Callie, who leaves it in a field to die.
Because he was convicted of a crime, Jeff has been sent to an experimental prison where inhabitants are guinea pigs for a man named Ray Abnesti, a sort of warden who develops pharmaceuticals. In an experiment to determine the strength of love, Abnesti puts Jeff in a room with a woman named Heather. Neither finds the other very attractive until a drug is administered and they suddenly fall deeply in love with each other and have sex. This continues until the drug stops being administered, when they suddenly lose all love for each other. The process is repeated with Jeff and a woman named Rachel. The next day, Abnesti brings both Heather and Rachel into a room and asks Jeff to decide which woman should be drugged with Darkenfloxx, a drug that causes extreme mental and physical distress. Jeff wants no one to be hurt, but has no preference as to which should endure the drug. Satisfied, Abnesti decides not to administer the drug. Later, Jeff finds himself in a room with another man who he realizes also had sex with Rachel and Heather. He realizes that Abnesti is asking one of the women which one of the men should be given Darkenfloxx. The same result happens each time, and the drug is never administered. Later, after Abnesti presents the love drug he is developing to his superiors, he says he must go into greater depth and gives Heather Darkenfloxx, saying that Jeff must say exactly what he feels while he watches Heather suffer in order to prove he has no romantic feelings for her. But the Darkenfloxx is so damaging that Heather commits suicide to escape the pain. When Abnesti reveals that he will do the same thing to Rachel to determine whether Jeff has a romantic attachment, Jeff refuses to participate. He insists that the drug should not be used. Abnesti leaves to get a warrant to administer drugs to Jeff that will force him to comply. To prevent Rachel from being tortured, Jeff administers Darkenfloxx to himself, and while under its influence kills himself.
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