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Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunders

3.76 · Rating details · 108,099 ratings · 18,121 reviews

The captivating first novel by the best-selling, National Book Award nominee George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven-year-old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War

On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln ...more

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Published February 14th 2017 by Random House Audio

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Oct 30, 2016 Angela M rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: arcs-from-publisher

It's a beautiful and sad but a strangely told story, and the narrative is different from anything I've read . The back of the cover description tells a poignant detail about Lincoln which Saunders in the Q&A tells us was the thought that formed for him the heart of this story. At the time of his 11 year old son Willie's death by typhoid fever, it was reported that Lincoln went to the crypt at night to hold his son's body. The grief that one can almost feel in that image is the essence of

It's a beautiful and sad but a strangely told story, and the narrative is different from anything I've read . The back of the cover description tells a poignant detail about Lincoln which Saunders in the Q&A tells us was the thought that formed for him the heart of this story. At the time of his 11 year old son Willie's death by typhoid fever, it was reported that Lincoln went to the crypt at night to hold his son's body. The grief that one can almost feel in that image is the essence of this book and has been fully and imaginatively depicted. The grief - this book is so filled with Lincoln's grief, it will break your heart. While this is told in such a unique way, it took me only a few pages to be pulled in. But the grief became overwhelming at times and I had to put it down for a break once in a while.

The first thing I did before I decided to read this book was look up the definition of bardo. " (in Tibetan Buddhism) a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in length according to a person's conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death. " (English Oxford Dictionary) I'm glad I did because most of this mixed narrative is comprised of the voices of the dead including Willie who are in the bardo. These conversations are interspersed with excerpts from historical texts mainly describing how they saw Lincoln suffering this tremendous loss, and as mentioned in the Q & A with Saunders, some of the excerpts are imagined. It's impossible to tell which are real and which are created as I read them. I decided not to look them up but to accept Saunders' creative license . This is a novel, albeit not a straightforward telling.

I thought it was a fascinating way to tell the story not just of the death of Willie but it is in many ways a commentary on the man who was president during a trying time in our history, a commentary on the time, but also on life and death. I recommend this to those who are open to something very different and very moving.

I received an ARC of this book from Random House ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Liz rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I should have known. I really don't do well with the avant garde. I want a plot, I want a story. I want character development. This offers none of the above. I felt lost. Vague memories of Ionesco and Beckett kept cropping up as I tried to plough through this. The book alternates between reading like a thesis, full of quotes from “other” sources and then almost more like a play. Ghosts come and ghosts go. They each have their own little mini-story but there is little continuity. Some ghosts ...more

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Mar 12, 2017 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

”The rich notes of the Marine Band in the apartments below came to the sick-room in soft, subdued murmurs, like the wild, faint sobbing of far off spirits.” Keckley, op. cit.

William Wallace Lincoln is sick.

He is burning up with fever.

His head is pounding to the beat of a song with a faster tempo than what he hears seeping through the floorboards from below.

He...can’t...breathe.

It feels like a fat man is squatting on his chest.

His father comes to see him. His eyes are hollowed out cinders. ...more

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Feb 23, 2017 Lisa rated it did not like it

Shelves: audio, tob-2018

Yes, I know I stand alone in my dislike for this book. EVERYONE loves it. Nope, not me. I actually hated it. I've heard people say they wanted to throw a book across a room and I never understood that desire to harm a book, but for me, this is one to throw. I should know better than to read a book in which the review says something like "an alternative writing" "a different way of telling a story". That just means it's weird, no plot, no character development, an author trying something new that ...more

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Mar 12, 2017 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, audio-physical, manbooker-winners, death-dying, end-of-life

From the first day I saw that George Sanders had a new release--I kept walking. I had a lot of resistance to read George Sanders again.
"The Tenth of December" was the number 1 best seller for months and months.....
Everyone seemed to 'LOVE' it. OUTSTANDING they all said. NOT FOR ME....I didn't understand the hype. It was 'alright'.....but not 'wow' for me by any means.
I remember thinking another 'lesser name' --- at the time --RISING today--was the OUTSTANDING collection of short stories -that ...more

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May 21, 2017 Emily May rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, historical-fiction, dnf, 2017

What a painfully boring book. 166 narrators chiming in and overlapping in a story that seems so random and disconnected for the most part. It might be deep, and it might be clever, but if there isn't the barest spark of something to make you care what's on the next page - then why even bother turning it?

I gave up at 35%. Life is way too short.

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Feb 08, 2017 Taryn rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: received-from-publisher, netgalley

I had a complicated relationship with this book. The writing was exquisite and I was amazed at the brilliance of the author, but there were also long sections where I felt completely lost.

The tide runs out but never runs in. The stones roll downhill but do not roll back up.

What I'm about to write doesn't even begin to sum this book up! President Abraham Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son Willie passes away after an illness. However, Willie doesn't realize he's dead. His soul is stuck in a I had a complicated relationship with this book. The writing was exquisite and I was amazed at the brilliance of the author, but there were also long sections where I felt completely lost.

The tide runs out but never runs in. The stones roll downhill but do not roll back up.

What I'm about to write doesn't even begin to sum this book up! President Abraham Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son Willie passes away after an illness. However, Willie doesn't realize he's dead. His soul is stuck in a transitional phase along with the other ghosts who populate the cemetery. On the evening of the funeral, Lincoln returns to the cemetery and cradles his dead son's body. The ghosts are amazed at the rare scene of a tenderness towards the dead. Lincoln leaves, but promises to return. It's unwise for a child to stay in the transitional realm for long, so some of the ghosts attempt to usher Willy into the next realm. Willie is determined to stay and wait for his father, so the ghosts must concoct a plan to convince him to move on.

Trap. Horrible trap. At one’s birth it is sprung. Some last day must arrive. When you will need to get out of this body. Bad enough. Then we bring a baby here. The terms of the trap are compounded. That baby also must depart. All pleasures should be tainted by that knowledge. But hopeful dear us, we forget. Lord, what is this?

George Saunders is always recommended to me when I mention my love of Helen Phillips, and now I know why! The storytelling is surreal and the imagery is bizarre, sometimes grotesque. Lincoln in the Bardo is both humorous and devastatingly sad. This 368-page book is actually rather short on words (the audiobook is only 7 hours and 25 minutes). Part of it is like a play and the other part is constructed from excerpts of other sources, both real and imagined. Hans Vollman, Roger Bevins, and Reverend Everly Thomas serve as our guides in the transitional stage between life and death. The form these ghosts take relate to unresolved issues at the time of their death. Hans Vollman died before he was able to consummate his marriage, so he walks around naked with a massive, swollen "member." Roger Bevins became hyper-aware of the world's beauty right before his death, so he's covered with eyes, hands, and noses. In a sad twist, these ghosts don't realize they are dead; they refer to their corpses as "sick-forms" and their coffins as "sick-boxes." They believe they will resume their lives eventually.

One feels such love for the little ones, such anticipation that all that is lovely in life will be known by them, such fondness for that set of attributes manifested uniquely in each: mannerisms of bravado, of vulnerability, habits of speech and mispronouncement and so forth; the smell of the hair and head, the feel of the tiny hand in yours—and then the little one is gone! Taken! One is thunderstruck that such a brutal violation has occurred in what had previously seemed a benevolent world. From nothingness, there arose great love; now, its source nullified, that love, searching and sick, converts to the most abysmal suffering imaginable.

It was really interesting how fact and fiction work alongside each other in this story. I was amazed at how Saunders juxtaposed pieces from various sources to create a complete picture, especially since many of the reports are contradictory. Some of the historical chapters were especially memorable:
1) Conflicting descriptions of the moon on the night of Willie's death - There's something beautiful about the unreliability of our memories.
2) Descriptions of Lincoln's appearance - He's described as an ugly man by many, but those who are more closely acquainted see him a little differently.
3) Criticism of the Lincoln during the Civil War - I couldn't help but think of the modern day while reading the intense and sometimes vulgar criticism of Abraham Lincoln. One of the detractor's comments would've been right at home in a YouTube comment section!

I was in error when I saw him as fixed and stable and thought I would have him forever. He was never fixed, nor stable, but always just a passing, temporary energy-burst. I had reason to know this. Had he not looked this way at birth, that way at four, another way at seven, been made entirely anew at nine? He had never stayed the same, even instant to instant. He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.

The heart of the novel is the strength of the bond between President Lincoln and Willie. In one interview, Saunders mentions the idea for this novel started with a vision he had of the Lincoln Memorial and the Pieta combined. That image came through crystal clear in the text, because the first thing I thought of when Lincoln holds is son was Michelangelo's Pietà. The pathos permeates the pages. Willie's intense need to be close to his father broke my heart. I felt the immense weight of both grief and the presidency on Abraham Lincoln's shoulders in a way that I've never gotten from my nonfiction reading. As he grieves for his beloved son, he agonizes over the decisions he has made as president. He was intellectually aware of the casualties of war, but there's a shift in him as he's forced to deal with the loss of his own son.

We had been considerable. Had been loved. Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departure caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory.

I enjoyed the idea of visiting with the other ghosts more as a general idea than in practice. There were so many characters and I didn't have patience for all of them. Maybe it was that we didn't get to spend that much time with them. Most of the time I wanted to get back to the Lincolns. A combination of the strange imagery and each ghost's distinct nineteenth-century speaking style made some of their voices difficult for me to read. The style was sometimes so opaque, that my mind couldn't penetrate it; sometimes I was just reading words, unable to extract any meaning from them. It didn't help that the names of the speakers were placed after they spoke, especially with the longer passages. Perhaps that's less of a concern in audio (distinct voices) or print (easier flipping). The hype around this book intensified my frustration. I checked the average rating after a sixty-page struggle and had one of those "Oh crap! I'm the only person in the world that doesn't understand this!" moments. If you hit a section that makes you feel more frustration than transcendence, you're not alone! I'm not saying any of this to discourage anyone from reading it, but to help anyone who is having similar struggles. It was worth it for me to continue through my frustration because some of my favorite moments are at the end, when Lincoln wrestles with decisions about the war.

Pale broken thing. Why will it not work. What magic word made it work. Who is the keeper of that word. What did it profit Him to switch this one off. What a contraption it is. How did it ever run. What spark ran it. Grand little machine. Set up just so. Receiving the spark, it jumped to life. What put out that spark? What a sin it would be. Who would dare. Ruin such a marvel. Hence is murder anathema.

All that being said, there were exceptions. I was touched by the woman who worried about the three daughters she left behind and the stories from the black contingent of ghosts was highly relevant. Some of the most heartbreaking scenes were watching the ghosts cycle through forms they were never able to realize. I've never felt more confronted about the transience of life or how our physical bodies are just temporary vessels. Tomorrow is never a guarantee, but it's easy to forget as we live our day-to-day lives. There's so much to learn from these ghosts as we see how they view their past lives and learn about their regrets. Somehow everything looks completely different once there are no more chances! I was hopeful that the inhabitants of the cemetery, including Willie, would be able to make peace with themselves and find a way to complete their journey.

He is just one. And the weight of it about to kill me. Have exported this grief. Some three thousand times. So far. To date. A mountain. Of boys. Someone’s boys. Must keep on with it. May not have the heart for it. One thing to pull the lever when blind to the result. But here lies one dear example of what I accomplish by the orders

I don't always have the easiest time with ghost stories, but the way these ghosts affect President Lincoln reminded me of the power of reading--how it allows the voices and experiences of those real and imagined, dead and alive shape who we are and influence our viewpoints. As the weight of new experiences overwhelms President Lincoln, a stronger empathy and sense of purpose arise in him. He knows what he must do to preserve the union. Under the disapproving eye of a nation, we watch as he comes to the steadfast conclusion that the "the swiftest halt to the thing (therefore the greatest mercy) might be the bloodiest." (Hans Vollman's words)

Reading this novel is a wholly unique experience. It's brilliant and emotionally powerful, but sometimes confusing (for me). My lack of star rating is not the same as zero--it's just an indication that I can't fit this book in any kind of rating system! One, two, or three stars seem too low because there were parts that I was amazed by, but four or five stars doesn't seem honest to my overall experience.* This book is hard to compare to anything else. As far as oddness, eerie atmosphere and the depth of emotion I felt, I was reminded of The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. For a more resoundingly positive review, I recommend reading Colson Whitehead's analysis in The New York Times and watching the "immersive narrative short" at the end.

Edit 3/20/17: Decided on 3 stars. I liked it, but not overwhelmingly so.

I received this book for free from NetGalley and Random House in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Its publication date is February 14, 2017. ...more

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Dec 29, 2016 Cheri rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, 2016, death-dying-end-of-life, netgalley

!! NOW AVAILABLE !!

4.5 Stars

How does one review a book such as this one? No words could possibly truly convey the potential journey a reader is embarking on when they open this novel. This is certainly nothing like any other book I’ve read, in concept or in style.

Before I requested this, I looked up several references to the definition of the bardo, both the Tibetan definition and how it’s meaning carries beyond the definition. Bardo is the “in-between place” a “transitional state,” the period !! NOW AVAILABLE !!

4.5 Stars

How does one review a book such as this one? No words could possibly truly convey the potential journey a reader is embarking on when they open this novel. This is certainly nothing like any other book I’ve read, in concept or in style.

Before I requested this, I looked up several references to the definition of the bardo, both the Tibetan definition and how it’s meaning carries beyond the definition. Bardo is the “in-between place” a “transitional state,” the period of the afterlife between two states – our former “reality” is no longer, the bardo seems much like a waiting space before you enter into your next phase of “life.” I would say this applies to the bereaved, as well as the deceased. Your former life has changed, and a period of time must pass before one may move on to the next phase, rebuild.

William Wallace Lincoln, the third son of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, had been sick off and on since the beginning of the year, as had his brother Tad. On February 20, 1862 at 5:00pm, Willie died – most likely of typhoid fever. Willie was eleven years old.

After Willie’s death, Abraham Lincoln often visited the crypt where Willie was interred, which continued for months. Holding him. This fact is the basis for this novel.

The majority of conversations throughout Lincoln in the Bardo are between the deceased who remain in the bardo. The conversations are sometimes more like ramblings, sometimes multiple inputs from the others that are often more a cacophony than harmonious choir of thoughts. Willie waits among them, waiting for his father’s return. Lincoln, in his grief, is in his own state of waiting, his mind unwilling to accept the reality.

Amidst all of the conversations are excerpts of historical texts regarding Lincoln’s behavior, his suffering. Some are letters sent to the President regarding the War from grieving parents. Some are compassionate and lovely. All paint a picture of an unbearable loss. Lincoln’s loss. The loss of the families whose sons were fighting in the war, or who had fought and were never coming home.

Having never read anything by George Saunders before, I am a bit in awe of the thought process that went into this rather astounding and poignant debut novel. I loved this, despite heartbreaking moments, it is strangely wonderful, the brilliance behind it still shone through.

Recommended.

Pub Date: 14 Feb 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House ...more

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Oct 20, 2017 Kevin Ansbro rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: doesn-t-live-up-to-the-hype, hist-fic, metaphysical, don-t-feel-u-have-to-like-it, human-psyche, human-emotions

"My son, here may indeed be torment, but not death."
—Dante (Purgatorio)

There really, really must be something wrong with me.
Many of my esteemed Goodreads friends, whose rave reviews I have a lot of faith in, are smitten with George Saunders' book. It's even won the blimmin' Booker Prize for crying out loud!

Um, where to begin? he grimaces, wringing his hands in the manner of a doctor delivering bad news.

I tried my hardest to like it, I really did - in the same way I once tried to like green ...more

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Oct 07, 2016 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lor

Wow, this wasn't just reading a novel it was a true reading experience. Wholly inventive, imaginative, the amount of research staggering, something totally new and different. Will admit having some trouble in the beginning, couldn't see where the author was going with this, wondering if it was gong to progress, it did in a very interesting way. Not going to rehash the plot, the description only loosely defines this. The book is helped along by some very unusual narrators, Vollmam and Bevins, ...more

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Aug 29, 2017 Hannah Greendale rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize-nominee, historical-fiction, booker-prize-winner

Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend.

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Aug 23, 2017 Jen rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Sorry Saunders, but I disliked your novel. Clearly, I'm swimming against the current on this one. Having read some convincing reviews, I thought it must be included in my TBR this year. Well, I almost tossed it aside 100 pages in and probably should have and not given it a rating.

This is a read of loss. A parent - president Lincoln - has lost his 11 year old son to an illness.
The bardo - is the place between heaven and hell - a purgatory of sorts. It's a story of ghosts, and of Willie, who are ...more

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Jun 19, 2018 Paromjit rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, netgalley

In this award winning piece of historical fiction, a blend of fact and fiction, Saunders writes of 1862, the American Civil War has been raging for less than year, now intensifying to unbearable proportions with the rising tide of the dead. Amidst this background, Lincoln is facing his very own personally traumatic and testing times. After having already lost a son earlier, his gravely ill 11 year old son, Willie, dies and is laid to rest in Georgetown cemetery with a devastated Lincoln ...more

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Jan 07, 2017 Sam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-reads

Lincoln in the Bardo is such a beautifully crystallized portrait of life, death, grief, and getting on, and really emphasizes our shared humanity in its unusual storytelling. I started and stopped in fits, but one massive read in a single sitting was the way for me to go on this, allowing it to crash and wash over me completely, and get acquainted with the style and be fully receptive to the ideas expressed here. Once submerged in the unique format, I was incredibly moved by the way Saunders is Lincoln in the Bardo is such a beautifully crystallized portrait of life, death, grief, and getting on, and really emphasizes our shared humanity in its unusual storytelling. I started and stopped in fits, but one massive read in a single sitting was the way for me to go on this, allowing it to crash and wash over me completely, and get acquainted with the style and be fully receptive to the ideas expressed here. Once submerged in the unique format, I was incredibly moved by the way Saunders is able to link the singular sadness and pain of one man losing his son (one great, historically critical man) to the comings and goings and suffering and salvation of all. This read was a force of nature for me: random, unexpected, bold, brilliant. It was unable to be fully pinned down into thought or analysis by me, but so easily appreciated and awed by its power and beauty. A full 5 stars for me, and likely to be my favorite read of the month (if not the year), as it's continued to haunt me since finishing it.

All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be. It was the nature of things. Though on the surface it seemed every person was different, this was not true. At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end. We must try to see one another in this way. As suffering, limited beings - perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.

The particulars are a matter of historical record and the book blurb: eleven-year-old Willie Lincoln has passed away and been laid to rest in February 1862, and amidst turmoil and war and death of the increasingly bloody Civil War, his father, President Abraham Lincoln, visits Willie's tomb and spends a night with his son's body. The novel focuses on that one night, as Willie's spirit is in the bardo (the space between life and death, lingering between states of reality). We're given a historical and cultural context and contemporary views of Lincoln, his family, and his performance as President and as a father to help us better understand his guilt, his loss, his suffering and his strength on that evening via a selection of quotes from actual biographical sources and those Saunders has imagined and created to better strengthen his portrait of the President in 1862. Fact and fiction weave together to display a complex view of Lincoln, compounded by getting into the President's mental space as he holds his son's corpse in the tomb.

All over now. He is either in joy or nothingness. (So why grieve? The worst of it, for him, is over.) Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussy and worry and doing. Only there is nothing left to do.

Willie is not in the bardo alone: a veritable Greek chorus of spirits accompanies him, urge him to move on while simultaneously rejecting their own status of death and clinging to the beauty, large and small, of life. It's this Greek chorus that helps round out the universality of Saunders' novel: Willie as one soul among many, all important, all meaningful, all moving toward the same fate and state. But the spirits are also individuals, even if they say similar things: each has their past and their death, a manner of speaking and a way of dealing with their bardo state. There's humor and introspection, ribald pronouncements and dark truths, trite obsessions and larger worries that come to the forefront with this group of spirits from backgrounds rich and poor, black and white, the array of personalities and issues in death as varied and interesting as in life. Those in the bardo must decide on this evening who is to ascend to the next state and leave behind their ties to their earthly existences, and who shall remain, and many look to Willie and his father as a means to connect with their own loved ones, while others take pains to help Willie move on, and Lincoln to be at peace with the loss of his son (and the deaths of the young men and boys on the battlefield, of Union and Confederate forces alike, and the captivity and dehumanization and death of the American slaves that also weigh on his conscience).

He was an open book. An opening book. That had just been opened up somewhat wider. By sorrow. And-by us.

...Taken! One is thunderstruck that such a brutal violation has occurred in what had previously seemed a benevolent world. From nothingness, there arose great love; now, its source nullified, that love, searching and sick, converts to the most abysmal suffering imaginable.

This is a novel that really brilliantly weaves the details of Lincoln's life in 1862 and specific pain of the loss of his young son, with larger themes connected to all humankind, past present and future, of our particular and universal fate, the horrible and yet beautiful "trap" of life and death, death's inevitability and unpredictability, and the glorious nature of love and pleasure and beauty and peace that a human life can contain is both tainted and yet more deeply beloved for that simple fact. You are a wave that has crashed upon the shore, repeat visions that implore souls in the bardo to move forward. And so too has Saunders' novel utterly crashed upon me, a brilliant, breathtaking meditation on the human experience: grief, life, death, and all in between. A hypnotic, powerful, entirely memorable read that I recommend to any and all who live and love and lose, as we all do.

-received an e-galley on edelweiss, thanks to Random House ...more

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Jun 24, 2018 Amalia Gavea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-literature, classics, historical-fiction, 19th-century, literary-fiction, favorites, history, usa

‘’My mother, I said. My father. They will come shortly. To collect me’’

Death is a cruel, cynical visitor. Sometimes invited, others unexpected, many more anticipated. Death is blind to age, race, religion, kindness or evilness. He does not discriminate, he takes everyone. He is the one certain thing in the life of every living creature. An unavoidable, unquestionable snatcher. However, don’t we all desire to know what happens next? Perhaps, this is what makes us so afraid, the fear of being ‘’My mother, I said. My father. They will come shortly. To collect me’’

Death is a cruel, cynical visitor. Sometimes invited, others unexpected, many more anticipated. Death is blind to age, race, religion, kindness or evilness. He does not discriminate, he takes everyone. He is the one certain thing in the life of every living creature. An unavoidable, unquestionable snatcher. However, don’t we all desire to know what happens next? Perhaps, this is what makes us so afraid, the fear of being lost forever. Whatever it may await, I hope it will be better than the Bardo. A state where souls that haven’t been set free linger, awaiting the next spirit to join their nightmarish Chorus. The Limbo, devoid of everything. A place visited by no God, no Devil. A battlefield, a community whose agony and frustration mirrors the society of the living.

This is where Willie, Abraham Lincoln’s son, finds himself shortly after he dies of a visceral fever. It is said that the great President would visit his child for many days, holding him and thus chaining him to a state where Willie cannot move on, keeping his soul in captivity. Saunders creates this monumental, extraordinary work around this incident and through Lincoln’s devastation, Willie’s uncertainty and confusion and the despair of all the trapped souls that become our guides in this horrifying journey, he weaves a tale of death, love and remembrance. I won’t comment on this experimental style, the theatrical format and the extraordinary ability to create a unique language for each narrator. For me, these elements aren’t important. What is important is the wealth of themes and issues that make the novel one of the most bizarre and fascinating experiences in the life of the reader.

‘’Many guests especially recalled the beautiful moon that shone that evening.’’

If I had to choose the one thing that made this novel so powerful, it would have to be the crystal clear way in which Saunders depicts the human soul in its kindest and worst aspects. This was obvious in the various views on Abraham Lincoln expressed by the spirits and by the extracts of the press in the era of the Civil War. Demons who desired to keep people chained because they had a different skin colour regarded him as a murderer who dragged their precious sons to war. But they said nothing of the dead sons of their ‘’property’’, the raped women, the absolute loss of any trace of human dignity they inflicted on others in their bloody plantations. As we travel through the Bardo, in the chapters that describe the various stages of Willie’s wandering, we see a nation divided by conflicting aspirations and expectations. We see the souls of criminals, prostitutes, noble born people who have come to realize that Death isn’t particularly dazzled by wealth and status. Their pain, despair and struggle for acceptance echo the universe of the living. The two realms are hardly different and while the pitiful ghosts battle with themselves to retain some sort of human identity, they also battle with each other because old habits die hard, if at all. In most of the characters, the difference to their breathing counterparts is little, they hardly regret their faults, all too eager to put the blame on someone else and lure Willie into their cold company.

Saunders writes a sublime elegy of the tremendous, frightening impact of a child’s death on the surviving family. It is a tragedy beyond words, a catastrophe that we don’t even dare to picture in our minds. The grief of good President Abraham is devastating to read, the pain of Mrs Lincoln tears through the soul. Girls that didn’t have the chance to live their love, young men who died on the battlefield, a priest who tried to fulfill his mission as best as he could, a young woman who was raped repeatedly by her master. There is so much pain and yet, the message never becomes dark or pessimistic. Even in the most brutal moments, a glimpse of hope shines through to remind us that, perhaps, if we really try to come together, to respect each other, a better world might become possible. This was Lincoln’s vision, a vision that has been viciously massacred by the majority of the presidents who have occupied the White House in recent History….Not to mention the state the world has found itself today…

Many things have been said about Lincoln In The Bardo. Some may consider it verbose, pretentious, illogical. That is understandable. Not every book is for every reader. For me, this is one of the very finest moments in Literature. Not because it won the Man Booker Prize. Many winners have come and gone and I found them mediocre, forgettable. Not because of the experimental style. Many books have served this technique well, many more will do so in the future. Technicalities don’t matter. It is a masterpiece because it pays homage to the struggles and seemingly futile causes that helped made this Creation a more tolerable place to inhabit. It is a masterpiece because it is written by an author who dived deep into the human soul, found the finest and the worst in all of us and created a tale that is ferocious, sad, haunting, generous, hopeful, tender and fragile. It’s not an easy read but who wants an easy read, anyway?

‘’If I could confer with him, I know he would approve; would tell me it is right that I should go, and come back no more. He was such a noble spirit. His heart loved goodness most.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.word... ...more

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Feb 17, 2017 Diane Barnes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: motley-crew, favorites

ADDITION TO REVIEW AFTER LISTENING TO AUDIO

This is the most unusual, incredible reading experience I have ever had. George Saunders is either a genius, or an other-worldly creature living among us and posing as an author.

I will leave the book description to Goodreads and the book jacket. I will only say this: if you enter this world and let yourself be carried along, you will emerge a different reader at the end. Some of you may not be able to do this, some of you may not wish to accept what is ...more

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Jan 15, 2017 LeAnne: GeezerMom rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: hot-mamas-book-club, litmus-test

"And if you go.. chasing rabbits,
and you know you're.. going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
has given you the call."

The unusual format, like oddly punctuated and inverted lines of a play, was fine by me. It just took some adjustment, and then it was easy to read.

But the random, psychedelic-seeming thought trains were way too artsy for me, and the periodic sophomoric vulgarity struck me as stupid (sorry). I did not titter for an instant. There was definitely a plot to follow, but "And if you go.. chasing rabbits,
and you know you're.. going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
has given you the call."

The unusual format, like oddly punctuated and inverted lines of a play, was fine by me. It just took some adjustment, and then it was easy to read.

But the random, psychedelic-seeming thought trains were way too artsy for me, and the periodic sophomoric vulgarity struck me as stupid (sorry). I did not titter for an instant. There was definitely a plot to follow, but like from the thick main trunk of a vine, there were tendrils of offshoots that obscured the main body at times. Some of these shoots were their own little stories, but some were just weedy backdrop. I'm all for setting a mood or seeing a theme evinced in different ways, although here, I just did not care about any of it.

I did have empathy with Lincoln and his boy, but this story robbed me even of that. Others have complimented the depth of research that went into the accounts, primarily at the front end of the story, but using two books and Google can cough up many quotes and accounts, and for me (who is a boring and methodical scientist), quantity does not equal quality. As a reader, some of them were entertaining (like opposing descriptions of the moon's phase, Lincoln's appearance, etc), but a handful would have sufficed. Thankfully, these barrels full of quotations took up more space such that I did not have to spend too much reading time in the bardo.

Oops. I've gone too far perhaps and ticked my five- and four-star friends off. But I'm not the "magical realism" type. Dull, grounded, and bound with facts, this story just isn't my thing. I do love Yann Martel's work and that of Gabriel García Márquez, though. Heck, I even adore reading The Master and Margarita every few years around Easter! Talk about the surreal! But this story went too far for me without a meaningful payoff. My 13 year old sister died pretty suddenly - within a week's time - many years ago, and maybe the deterioration of dead 11-year-old Willie speaking from the half-life added to my distaste. I felt a bit protective of and angry on behalf of President Lincoln, too. He was a real person - a heartbroken dad with a helluva stressful job. How dare we pull his memory and that of his little boy out and sandwich it with these absurd ghosts, ones with giant phalluses and multiple noses, just for our entertainment? Shall we next exhume Martin Luther King?

The recurring matterlightblooming phenomena and Mr Bevins' ever growing number of appendages were just too ridiculous for my taste. If Edward Scissorhands or the Mad Hatter or Beetle Juice thrilled you, be my guest - you'll love this. I just do not have an active enough imagination to have taken the plunge into the bardo.

Despite the constellations of five stars out there, this thing went dim for me at the halfway point. . I'd have to have eaten some sort of magic mushroom to have liked this...just not my taste. ...more

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Mar 12, 2017 Robin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, favourites, historical-fiction, 2017, american, booker-prize-winner

**Man Booker Prize Winner!**

The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one's beloved's name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger.
Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead.
Goodbye, I must now say goodbye to all of it.

George Saunders has written a magnificent, unique, ...more

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Dec 24, 2017 William2 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I avoid the G word. That’s a determination I like to put off until rereading. But this novel’s certainly masterful. I have read nothing so near perfect in some years. The narrative rides a kind of knife edge, between unbearable sorrow one moment and comic relief the next.

‘Almost unbearably moving’ was what Anthony Burgess used to say about some of the better books he reviewed. I must say the same with regard to Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s about unendurable personal loss and grief suffered by ...more

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Jan 10, 2017 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, aere-perennius

"He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness."
- George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

description

Again, I find myself wandering at night alone, reading grief literature. I'm not sure if I have just accidentally stumbled on my own special vein of grief literature or if this dark path has suddenly become more popular ("to hell with erotic fiction, let us read tales of the sad survivors"). But, here I am, writing another transuding review of another sad book. No. ...more

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Apr 18, 2018 Sean Barrs the Bookdragon rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: man-booker-prize-winners, historical, 2-star-reads, contemporary-lit

It is becoming increasingly hard to create original literature these days. The fundamental problem with modern art is that everything has been done before. Writers, painters and musicians have to concoct something extraordinarily different to be new.

And George Saunders has done exactly that. There has never been a book quite like this before and that’s why it won the Man Booker Prize 2017. The judges for the last few years have been weighing literary originality over literary quality in my ...more

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Jan 14, 2017 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read2017, reviewcopy, booker-winners-and-listed, around-the-usa, audiobook, location-usa-illinois

Imagine the historical research approach of someone like David McCullough, and pull those details into a novel that takes place almost entirely in a graveyard, ghosts and all (picture The Graveyard Book), and you have this novel. I was lucky to receive a review copy of the audiobook from the publisher, because I think this is the preferred format for the novel.

Since George Saunders wrote the novel in 108 sections, with distinct voices, they decided to use 166 voices in the recording (Time Imagine the historical research approach of someone like David McCullough, and pull those details into a novel that takes place almost entirely in a graveyard, ghosts and all (picture The Graveyard Book), and you have this novel. I was lucky to receive a review copy of the audiobook from the publisher, because I think this is the preferred format for the novel.

Since George Saunders wrote the novel in 108 sections, with distinct voices, they decided to use 166 voices in the recording (Time Magazine did a short profile of the upcoming production, and you can listen to an excerpt on the publisher site.)

Nick Offerman and David Sedaris, along with George Saunders, are three primary voices (although I thought Sedaris was Holly Hunter until after I'd finished, despite having heard him narrate his own books) and a cast of friends, stars, and family fill out the rest. Some voices are heard only one time, reading a letter or fact from what sounds like real sources, and I imagine some are, some aren't. That is a bit confusing in the beginning, until you get into the rhythm of the novel. It's enough to know that you don't need to remember the voices in conjunction with their names, so they can pass through your mind.

Some of the time the multiple voices seem to just be providing context, but often they are playing with the narrative of context, some remembering a full moon, others remembering a cloudy night, others remembering a crescent, etc. These tiny excerpts are often followed by the narrator with an abbreviation I had not heard, so here's a hint: "Op. cit." refers to a longer bibliography or a previously mentioned citation. I wish they had left that out of the audio because I had no idea what it was for most of my listening experience. I had looked up opsit, opsid, oppsid, upsid, and every other combination until I found it. It's a minor thing but gets used so frequently with all the tiny bits, that it drove me to distraction!

Overall the novel is pretty fragmented, and I found I did better in comprehending it when listening for long spans of time, like the five hours I spent in the car yesterday. I am not sure what kind of novel I expected Saunders to write for his first published longer work, but I did not expect something quite so simultaneously historical and experimental!

The highlight for me has to be Nick Offerman though. He is an excellent narrator and now I want to go back and listen to more of his productions. More, please!

ETA: Changed my 4 stars to 5 the more I thought about it.

One more ETA: love or hate it, this sucker just won the Man Booker Prize! ...more

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Aug 10, 2017 Jaline rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: xx2017-completed

This is an intriguing book; one that is very inventive and yet its basic premise is based on strong possibilities, if not probabilities. There are brief historical excerpts throughout from various sources that are amazing in that they outline stronger than ever that “eye witness” testimony is pretty much wasted without a camera to back it up. For example, on a historically memorable night 5 or 10 people can look at the same night sky and see no moon at all, or a moon – but in about 5 or 6 This is an intriguing book; one that is very inventive and yet its basic premise is based on strong possibilities, if not probabilities. There are brief historical excerpts throughout from various sources that are amazing in that they outline stronger than ever that “eye witness” testimony is pretty much wasted without a camera to back it up. For example, on a historically memorable night 5 or 10 people can look at the same night sky and see no moon at all, or a moon – but in about 5 or 6 different colors and shapes. They can also look at a man’s eyes and see different colors and different expressions. The subjectivity and deception of our senses are brought to life more in this book than any other I have read.

Abraham Lincoln’s young son, Willie, becomes ill and dies. The Lincoln family are devastated by the loss of their 11 year old boy. Unknowingly, President Lincoln’s deep pain of mourning and promises made at his son’s interment site are anchoring young Willie and preventing him from leaving the state of Bardo and moving on.

In Tibetan Buddhism, Bardo is comprised of several different levels of consciousness that a soul after death ideally moves through to reach the afterlife or next life entry level. There are ways to prepare oneself for these stages while still living, but most souls will have to find their way through the various stages on their own. These stages are recognizable in the various “grounded” souls that Willie comes into contact with. The dialogues here are funny, poignant, and sad – separately and all at once. These souls tell their stories throughout the book – some clearer than others. Sometimes when they get ‘stuck’ in their story they receive prompting from others who have heard their stories literally thousands of times before and have them memorized.

The storyline clips back and forth between President Lincoln, the small excerpts from his admirers and detractors, and the various souls in the graveyard, all of them stuck in some level of Bardo that is still attached to earthly concerns.

There are so many aspects of this book that impressed me, and while I couldn’t help but feel the intense sadness of President Lincoln and his family, I was also entertained by the stories and the wide variety of states of consciousness of the souls in Bardo. I actually feel guilty saying that – but some of the exchanges were just plain funny.

This is an impressive book for so many reasons and in the end, I was left with the kind of feeling you get when walking out of a theatre after watching an especially good movie. The bemused smile on the face, the eyes half in this world and half still seeing parts of the movie, the mind at rest yet still processing what it just witnessed. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves that “after-movie” feeling with none of the accompanying partial deafness.
...more

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Apr 21, 2017 Steve rated it liked it · review of another edition

You know those half-awake, half-asleep dreams where you’re working through your problems of the day? The first wakeful moments in the shower usually let you know that any solutions you thought might apply were pure nonsense. Even more often you realize the things you were thinking about weren’t really problems anyway – it was all just anxiety for the hell of it. Anyway, last night I went to bed thinking about what I might say about this celebrated new Saunders book I just read. Even as I was ...more

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Feb 22, 2017 Perry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mina-favoritböcker, books-most-loved

Like a cosmic chorus in 'cordial unison' under brocades of blue and a rain of red glare

George Saunders' brilliant literary achievement is the ideal book for the Fourth of July in profoundly reminding us of our union as citizens of the United States of America, this great nation created by our forefathers' Declaration of Independence from the "absolute Despotism," "long train of abuses and usurpations" and "invasions on the rights of the people" by the then "King of Great Britain," our democracy ...more

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Jan 22, 2017 Trish rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: allegory, author-i-d-most-like-to-meet, america, favorite, fiction, funny, literature, audio, philosophy, buddhism

The form of this novel is what readers will notice first. It begins as a series of quotes from reporters’ notebooks, eyewitness accounts, historians using original sources, and we must assume, Civil War-era gossip rags, describing an 1862 White House party which a thousand or more people attended. To say the affair was elaborate understates the case. Apparently when a thousand hungry guests descended on the tables of food, the quantity was such that it looked untouched after the assault.

Some of ...more

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Mar 26, 2017 Lyn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A reader of George Saunders’ 2017 novel Lincoln in the Bardo will make immediate comparisons to Thornton Wilder’s 1938 drama Our Town and Edgar Lee Master’s 1915 book Spoon River Anthology as well as observing references to Dante’s Inferno and the Bible.

Saunders, known for such unique and original works as Tenth of December and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, has again stretched the limits of creative writing and has here produced a work of fiction unlike any other. Extensively researched (though I ...more

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Jun 02, 2016 Jill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2016

One of my great passions in life is reading – and reviewing – books. But how to review this book? It renders me speechless and. I almost feel compelled to reduce my review to two words: “Read it.”

Years ago, I learned, while visiting the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois, that Abraham Lincoln was so prostrated by grief after the death of his favorite son Willie that he visited the crypt for months afterwards, opening the coffin and stroking the face and hair of his deceased son. It’s a One of my great passions in life is reading – and reviewing – books. But how to review this book? It renders me speechless and. I almost feel compelled to reduce my review to two words: “Read it.”

Years ago, I learned, while visiting the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois, that Abraham Lincoln was so prostrated by grief after the death of his favorite son Willie that he visited the crypt for months afterwards, opening the coffin and stroking the face and hair of his deceased son. It’s a macabre image but one that is sears at the very heart of anyone who has lost a loved one.

This image is the seed from which Lincoln in the Bardo sprouts. The Bardo, in Tibetian Buddhism, is a sort of limbo state between death and rebirth into the next life. Willie lingers in that state, unable to move forward, while his father languishes in his own bardo: needing to take the helm and steer the country forward while feeling near paralyzed by his despondency.

The book is peopled by ghosts except for three of the living: the president, the night watchman, and a woman in a home across from the graveyard. Using a Greek chorus approach, many characters speak in turn – Willie and many of his fellow deceased who cannot move on and two of the three living characters. We never hear Abraham Lincoln’s own voice.

Even more remarkably, the book not only intertwines and living and the dead, it also intertweaves history. There are direct quotes from the time (all annotated) as well as fictional quotes from the time (also “annotated”) and then there are the voices. Only the most precise historian would be able to decipher what is real and what is invented.

Yet it almost doesn’t matter because the book is not just – or even primarily -- about Abraham and Willie. It is about Every Man. And here is where it becomes remarkable. As the chorus reminds us: “Though on the surface it seemed every person was different, this was not true. At the core of each lay suffering, our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end. We must try to see each other in this way. As suffering, limited beings—Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.”

George Saunders, in soaring and lyrical prose that sometimes approaches poetry, advances the theme that whatever happens to us after we die, it won’t be entirely unconnected to what we are while living. By the end of the novel, I was convinced that this was not a death story. It’s a love story – a love story for humanity and all that interconnects us.

One of the characters says, “One must be constantly looking for opportunities to tell one’s story.” To understand our own story and to have the understanding and grace to tell it is truly what matters. This may be one of my favorite contemporary books ever.

...more

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Mar 09, 2017 Matthew Quann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: avant-garde, black humour fans

Shelves: favourites, audiobooks, booker-prize, golden-booker, man-booker-shortlist-2017

Update: Booker Prize Winner 2017, a well deserved win for this excellent novel!

I came upon Lincoln in the Bardo as someone comes upon a house on fire—tentatively. Placing a hand to the embossed dust jacket and turning deckle-edged pages at random filled me with the sphincter-tightening dread, which I have previously equated to looking down at the earth from a significant height. It seemed as if the book were more screenplay than proper novel, and I had no interest in dawdling amidst ...more

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Mar 10, 2017 Phrynne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 4000-books, favorites

This was one of the most unusual books I have ever read! I think it is what you would have to describe as a reading experience since it is told in multiple voices aided by constant footnotes attributing the text to its sources. So clever! And so much research. The author must have become a real expert on Abraham Lincoln by the time he finished writing.
Amazingly the whole fascinating book takes place over one night immediately after Lincoln's young son's funeral. Lincoln makes a last visit to his ...more

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About George Saunders

George Saunders

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George 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 ...more

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Quotes from Lincoln in the Bardo

“His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help, or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.” — 94 likes

“Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.” — 78 likes

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