‘Sea Oak’ unfolds in a dystopian, funhouse-mirror version of America – an over-sugared, blaring idiocracy. The narrator lives in a “dangerous craphole” with his sister and cousin, their babies, and long-suffering Aunt Bernie who works thanklessly for minimum wage to support the family (a modern-day Ma Parker). Tragically, Aunt Bernie dies of fright when an intruder breaks into their apartment, only to return soon afterwards from the dead, strangely transformed and emboldened.
What I find irresistible is George Saunders’ quasi-anthropological commitment to the particularities of his fictional world, from the depraved reality shows on TV to the details of the narrator’s workplace (an aviation-themed strip club called Joysticks). There’s also a delightful string of walk-on characters, including the priest who declares that upon discovering Aunt Bernie’s newly-vacated grave, he “literally sat down in astonishment.” And so the story thunders along in its full-throated madness and surreal glory, until – like a magician who has artfully misdirected the audience – Saunders throws out a dazzling ending you didn’t see coming at all. I’ve read it so many times, and each time I literally sit down in astonishment.
First published in The New Yorker, December 1998, and collected in Pastoralia, Bloomsbury, 2000. Available to read online in The Barcelona Review here
A Personal Anthology 