What do you think?
Rate this book
The Semplica Girls Diaries
A novella that deals with a family in a not-too-distant future that is struggling to keep up with the Joneses—which, in this society, means leasing some unusual garden ornaments.
57 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 2012
57 people want to read
About the author
George Saunders
102 books10.3k followersGeorge Saunders was born December 2, 1958 and raised on the south side of Chicago. In 1981 he received a B.S. in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He worked at Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, NY as a technical writer and geophysical engineer from 1989 to 1996. He has also worked in Sumatra on an oil exploration geophysics crew, as a doorman in Beverly Hills, a roofer in Chicago, a convenience store clerk, a guitarist in a Texas country-and-western band, and a knuckle-puller in a West Texas slaughterhouse.
After reading in People magazine about the Master's program at Syracuse University, he applied. Mr. Saunders received an MA with an emphasis in creative writing in 1988. His thesis advisor was Doug Unger.
He has been an Assistant Professor, Syracuse University Creative Writing Program since 1997. He has also been a Visiting Writer at Vermont Studio Center, University of Georgia MayMester Program, University of Denver, University of Texas at Austin, St. Petersburg Literary Seminar (St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer 2000), Brown University, Dickinson College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges.
He conducted a Guest Workshop at the Eastman School of Music, Fall 1995, and was an Adjunct Professor at Saint John Fisher College, Rochester, New York, 1990-1995; and Adjunct Professor at Siena College, Loudonville, New York in Fall 1989.
He is married and has two children.
His favorite charity is a project to educate Tibetan refugee children in Nepal. Information on this can be found at http://www.tibetan-buddhist.org/index...
After reading in People magazine about the Master's program at Syracuse University, he applied. Mr. Saunders received an MA with an emphasis in creative writing in 1988. His thesis advisor was Doug Unger.
He has been an Assistant Professor, Syracuse University Creative Writing Program since 1997. He has also been a Visiting Writer at Vermont Studio Center, University of Georgia MayMester Program, University of Denver, University of Texas at Austin, St. Petersburg Literary Seminar (St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer 2000), Brown University, Dickinson College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges.
He conducted a Guest Workshop at the Eastman School of Music, Fall 1995, and was an Adjunct Professor at Saint John Fisher College, Rochester, New York, 1990-1995; and Adjunct Professor at Siena College, Loudonville, New York in Fall 1989.
He is married and has two children.
His favorite charity is a project to educate Tibetan refugee children in Nepal. Information on this can be found at http://www.tibetan-buddhist.org/index...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 30, 2024
The Semplica Girls Diaries packs a full and important novel in just a few pages. It's a must!
August 31, 2025
The Semplica-Girl Diaries by George Saunders is one of part of the collection Tenth of December, which is one of the Top 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s https://time.com/5719966/best-fiction...
10 out of 10
Perhaps the main theme of The Semplica-Girl Diaries would be the rift between the very rich and the rest of humankind, albeit this is much more sophisticated than offering us a one-horse race, and there is the alienation, the growing distance between the west and the ‘emerging countries’, love, aspirations of the destitute all come to mind in a flash and there are other layers to unfold and reveal more food for thought…just as Victory Lap http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/v... the story that opens the collection is not simply about a pervert that kills victims he kidnaps and tries to rape, when he does not find he is aroused enough, he eliminates them, until he is valiantly stopped for good…
The narrator has just turned forty, he is a college graduate with a rather peculiar writing style – we may almost think that standards will be lower in the future, where this saga is placed –that has decided to keep a diary and show future generations what life was like in his time – we share that feeling, albeit I am less optimistic about people reading these notes and convinced that Artificial Intelligence will consume them, and enjoy the parts in which pay tribute to this (single) future reader, who will have the capacity to assimilate All that there is out there, and though it will take It a billionth of a billionth of a second (we should go down further and say that it is as near zero as the limit can get) it will be processed, and by a ‘mind’ that is many times more capable than any we may have
Our diary man is not poor, indeed, it will be interesting to see the effect that comparisons have on our wellbeing, for we will find him and his family in the middle between the outrageously rich and the destitute that come from places such as Moldova (right outside our door) and Laos – HL Mencken: "Wealth -- any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband’ and research has proved the truth of that quote, they asked participants in tests to choose between having a certain income, say 80k, while colleagues would have 60k, and one that is much higher, at 130k, but in a scenario wherein the rest would have 150k and which do you think they rather have…
Our story teller drives to a party, taking place in a mansion that has all the amenities, luxuries of the privileged, three Ferraris, three Porsches, six outbuildings, a tree house that the son of the less affluent family, Thomas, says that it is twice the size of their own house (we find that it is actually a third of the size, but still, a big tree house) they have nine horses, six llamas and ‘SG girls’, though studies have shown that the happiest people do not have this excessive wealth in common, instead they share strong bonds with their families and friends…Hedonic Adaptation prevents humans from taking too much pleasure from, well, almost anything, a rule which has its advantages, since we get used with the enjoyable, but we also adapt to unfortunate events, except the loss of a dear one, intense noise, unemployment, which are harder to take on a regular basis, and as for money, we better spend them on experiences analysis shows…
The host of the party is a surgeon that inserts electronic devices into the brains of people – remember, this is the future, in which many things will have changed, parents will decide to edit the genes of their offspring and people will become gods – unless of course we will soon be blown up by Putin – and dying might be delayed to the point where living for two hundred and more years will not be such a fantasia – read more in the fabulous Homo Deus by Yuval Harari http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/h...
While the brain surgeon and his family enjoy exorbitant luxuries – this is a recipe for general malaise by the way, the happier countries, the Nordica top these charts, have smaller differences between those who have and the very unfortunate, while places with immense distance are gloomier – the diarist, Eva and Lilly, his daughters, Pam, his wife and Thomas have to face harsh challenges, the bumper on their very old jalopy falls off, they are late in paying bills and have no money on which to look forward to better days and the gifts that Lilly wants for her upcoming birthday are out of reach for her dad…
Up to the point where he is lucky and wins ten grand – before that, our scrivener thought of…drawing the picture of the gift his daughter wanted, only he hilariously though she might think she will get for the IOU a camel, not the cheetah she expected, made of porcelain – and the whole game is changed, a paradigm shift, because he is unaware that psychologist have looked at his exact situation, when they studied what happens to lottery winners to see the effects of being rich, and if the winners would see a boost in their levels of happiness, that would only last for a few months, after which they returned to their base level of happiness, unless they committed rash acts of over spending…
It is only understandable, nay, even admirable for the father to try and offer all he can to his daughter, in the process, trying to compensate for the shame, embarrassments she had felt, when she saw that she cannot have any party, for she would be thinking of the reaction of Leslie (the girl with many cars, llamas and so much else) and the shame she would have when she compared the two families and their possessions or lack thereof – some psychologists suggest that we do not compare ourselves to others http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/01/f... Sonja Lyubomirsky explains it in her divine The How of Happiness, while others would say we should compare ourselves with those who have less – so Lilly decides to forgo any party that would have guests at her home
Deciding to make a splash with a lot of the ten grand – instead of being more cautious, seeing that the means are limited – a surprise party is organized and Semplica-Girls are brought in, they are the ‘fashion’ and what happens is they are ‘imported’ from developing countries (code for what used to be labeled the third world, or in the words of the disgusting fellow that leads the republican party in America, ‘shit-hole countries’) such as Laos and Moldova…the latter used to part of my own land, only now it is in danger of falling back into a new USSR, if the Scoundrel in the Kremlin has his way…
Thus, the narrative becomes a meditation on poor versus rich, poor is relative to the standard you compare tom the aspirations and it would help to have Stoic rules…’wish for what you already have’ would be one…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...?
10 out of 10
Perhaps the main theme of The Semplica-Girl Diaries would be the rift between the very rich and the rest of humankind, albeit this is much more sophisticated than offering us a one-horse race, and there is the alienation, the growing distance between the west and the ‘emerging countries’, love, aspirations of the destitute all come to mind in a flash and there are other layers to unfold and reveal more food for thought…just as Victory Lap http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/v... the story that opens the collection is not simply about a pervert that kills victims he kidnaps and tries to rape, when he does not find he is aroused enough, he eliminates them, until he is valiantly stopped for good…
The narrator has just turned forty, he is a college graduate with a rather peculiar writing style – we may almost think that standards will be lower in the future, where this saga is placed –that has decided to keep a diary and show future generations what life was like in his time – we share that feeling, albeit I am less optimistic about people reading these notes and convinced that Artificial Intelligence will consume them, and enjoy the parts in which pay tribute to this (single) future reader, who will have the capacity to assimilate All that there is out there, and though it will take It a billionth of a billionth of a second (we should go down further and say that it is as near zero as the limit can get) it will be processed, and by a ‘mind’ that is many times more capable than any we may have
Our diary man is not poor, indeed, it will be interesting to see the effect that comparisons have on our wellbeing, for we will find him and his family in the middle between the outrageously rich and the destitute that come from places such as Moldova (right outside our door) and Laos – HL Mencken: "Wealth -- any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband’ and research has proved the truth of that quote, they asked participants in tests to choose between having a certain income, say 80k, while colleagues would have 60k, and one that is much higher, at 130k, but in a scenario wherein the rest would have 150k and which do you think they rather have…
Our story teller drives to a party, taking place in a mansion that has all the amenities, luxuries of the privileged, three Ferraris, three Porsches, six outbuildings, a tree house that the son of the less affluent family, Thomas, says that it is twice the size of their own house (we find that it is actually a third of the size, but still, a big tree house) they have nine horses, six llamas and ‘SG girls’, though studies have shown that the happiest people do not have this excessive wealth in common, instead they share strong bonds with their families and friends…Hedonic Adaptation prevents humans from taking too much pleasure from, well, almost anything, a rule which has its advantages, since we get used with the enjoyable, but we also adapt to unfortunate events, except the loss of a dear one, intense noise, unemployment, which are harder to take on a regular basis, and as for money, we better spend them on experiences analysis shows…
The host of the party is a surgeon that inserts electronic devices into the brains of people – remember, this is the future, in which many things will have changed, parents will decide to edit the genes of their offspring and people will become gods – unless of course we will soon be blown up by Putin – and dying might be delayed to the point where living for two hundred and more years will not be such a fantasia – read more in the fabulous Homo Deus by Yuval Harari http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/h...
While the brain surgeon and his family enjoy exorbitant luxuries – this is a recipe for general malaise by the way, the happier countries, the Nordica top these charts, have smaller differences between those who have and the very unfortunate, while places with immense distance are gloomier – the diarist, Eva and Lilly, his daughters, Pam, his wife and Thomas have to face harsh challenges, the bumper on their very old jalopy falls off, they are late in paying bills and have no money on which to look forward to better days and the gifts that Lilly wants for her upcoming birthday are out of reach for her dad…
Up to the point where he is lucky and wins ten grand – before that, our scrivener thought of…drawing the picture of the gift his daughter wanted, only he hilariously though she might think she will get for the IOU a camel, not the cheetah she expected, made of porcelain – and the whole game is changed, a paradigm shift, because he is unaware that psychologist have looked at his exact situation, when they studied what happens to lottery winners to see the effects of being rich, and if the winners would see a boost in their levels of happiness, that would only last for a few months, after which they returned to their base level of happiness, unless they committed rash acts of over spending…
It is only understandable, nay, even admirable for the father to try and offer all he can to his daughter, in the process, trying to compensate for the shame, embarrassments she had felt, when she saw that she cannot have any party, for she would be thinking of the reaction of Leslie (the girl with many cars, llamas and so much else) and the shame she would have when she compared the two families and their possessions or lack thereof – some psychologists suggest that we do not compare ourselves to others http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/01/f... Sonja Lyubomirsky explains it in her divine The How of Happiness, while others would say we should compare ourselves with those who have less – so Lilly decides to forgo any party that would have guests at her home
Deciding to make a splash with a lot of the ten grand – instead of being more cautious, seeing that the means are limited – a surprise party is organized and Semplica-Girls are brought in, they are the ‘fashion’ and what happens is they are ‘imported’ from developing countries (code for what used to be labeled the third world, or in the words of the disgusting fellow that leads the republican party in America, ‘shit-hole countries’) such as Laos and Moldova…the latter used to part of my own land, only now it is in danger of falling back into a new USSR, if the Scoundrel in the Kremlin has his way…
Thus, the narrative becomes a meditation on poor versus rich, poor is relative to the standard you compare tom the aspirations and it would help to have Stoic rules…’wish for what you already have’ would be one…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...?
July 25, 2025
Saunders’ futuristic dystopian meditations on class and wealth are often my favorite pieces by him. In this one, a class-conscious father buys women who serve as human lawn ornaments to keep up with the Jones’, only to have them set free by his daughter. I really liked this one.
Read
August 9, 2024liked this a lot!
August 31, 2024
DAMN! That's CRAZY! But also... not that crazy? Because this was brilliant? This made me SICK
January 3, 2025
maybe my favorite short story ever. absolutely haunting and such a perfectly-done reveal.
January 9, 2025
this is such an interesting concept. i’m excited to see the movie adaptation
April 10, 2025
Enigmatic is the first word that comes to mind. What a peculiar concept SGs, gift-wrapped in the main character’s entertaining (written) chatter.
October 23, 2025
It was a good story with a good premise but the style pissed me off so badly.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews