Instruct: Classify a given review as either positive or negative.
Query: Magazine Fiction

Saunders is a writer that is working on a single theme, with singular energy. This is not a problem for a writer if he brings something fresh to the theme each time he tackles it. Saunders will sometimes do this, but more often than not, he fails. That is why some of the stories in this collection are brilliant, while others seem like derivatives of those moments of brilliance. Rather than bring us a fresh insight on the problems of fiction, Saunders seems content to simply reiterate. Saunders is the archetypical writer of magazine fiction: in between the slick covers of The New Yorker his work is a bold standout, but when you set his stories alongside each other in a volume, the record skips.