Pastoralia
Before Tenth of December made him famous, Pastoralia was the collection where Saunders locked in his voice: corporate dystopia played for laughs that curdle into dread. The title novella, about two theme-park employees pretending to be cavemen, is the funniest story about workplace despair ever written. Every sentence sounds like it was focus-grouped by a committee that hates you.
Winky is the story readers keep flagging as the weak link, a man's confrontation with his sister that, in more than one reader's words, “didn't quite go anywhere.” The other five stories share the same deadpan-bleak register closely enough that one reader calls the back half “repetitive, rambling passages” after a strong opener, and some readers find the struggling, working-class characters flattened into a “cardboard quality” despite the technical polish. The title novella is strong enough on its own that everything after it plays as a comedown, and a reader admits “a little Saunders goes a long way for me” read start to finish. The corporate-dystopia beats echo what CivilWarLand in Bad Decline already covered, making parts of this read like a rerun of the debut.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
