In The Mom of Bold Action, one of nine short stories in George Saunders’s Liberation Day, a children’s author struggles to come up with ideas while working in her kitchen. But then inspiration strikes after her son is pushed to the ground by a homeless man and comes home with a bloody face and “weaving like a little drunk”.
The actor and Saturday Night Live stalwart Tina Fey veers between belligerence and neurosis as she narrates this oddball tale about a woman wrestling with her conscience and inescapable inner monologue. “You are trapped in you,” the woman says, ominously. When her husband reads her new story, he is inspired to visit revenge on the man who hurt their son, only he targets the wrong person. “The world was harsh. Too harsh,” concludes our protagonist. “Make one mistake, pay for it the rest of your life.”
