Oh, my God. I'm going to sue George Saunders because reading this book cost me my human dignity. I was reduced to an insensate quivering gelatin during the story "Sea Oak," which is the funniest thing ever in the history of the universe.
Get this eulogy for Aunt Bernie:
We bury her at St. Leo's, on the hill up near BastCo. Her part of the graveyard's pretty plain. No angels, no little rock houses, no flowers, just a bunch of flat stones like parking bumpers and here and there a Styrofoam cup. Father Brian says a prayer and then one of us is supposed to talk. But what's there to say? She never had a life. Never married, no kids, work work work. Did she ever go on a cruise? All her life it was buses. Buses buses buses. Once she went with Ma on a bus to Quigley, Kansas, to gamble and shop at an outlet mall. Someone broke into her room and stole her clothes and took a dump in her suitcase while they were at the Roy Clark show. That was it. That was the extent of her tourism. After that it was DrugTown, night and day. After fifteen years as Cashier she got demoted to Greeter. People would ask her where the cold remedies were and she'd point to some big letters on the wall that said Cold Remedies.
And yet Aunt Bernie was a tender hearted soul who always saw the positive--as her niece said, "What an optometrist." She comes back from the dead and decides to get laid and do all she missed while alive--and that's just one story in this crazy collection!
Read this guy.
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