RaveElleOut of this gemlike, poignant, unsettling historical moment, George Saunders has risen an unsentimental novel of Shakespearean proportions, gorgeously stuffed with tragic characters, bawdy humor, terrifying visions, throat-catching tenderness, and a galloping narrative, all twined around the luminous cord connecting a father and son and backlit by a nation engulfed in fire ... Saunders earned literary fame as a short-story writer, celebrated by his peers for his virtuosity and for his quiet insistence that fiction has a job to do in the world, a role to play in the opening of the reader's heart. That he achieves this effect over the course of this, his first novel, has left deep ruts in a road he often seems to be driving all by himself ... a novel unlike any other.
