William Leith2 January 2014
In the middle of one of the stories in this collection, Al Roosten, I stopped reading and had to laugh for a while, and then I read the same bit again, knowing it would make me laugh again. It’s a moment when Al, a man who’s not very happy, gets all bitter about homeless people. Saunders sees the meanness that exists in sad people, in a way that makes you understand the sadness better. There’s a story here about a dying man who wants to die, and then realises he feels much better to be merely dying. Saunders has a gentle-seeming wit that is actually laser-guided.
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