Lincoln in the Bardo

by George Saunders

surprising grace for one so ill-made,

Come with us, he whispered. Here it is all savagery and delusion. You are of finer stuff. Come with us, all is forgiven.

I may yet reverse it, I said. Dear boy, said the second. Soften, soften, said a third. You are a wave that has crashed upon the shore, said a fourth.

You are a wave that has crashed upon the shore, she said.

Each night passed with a devastating sameness.

I saw, as if for the first time, the great beauty of the things of this world: waterdrops in the woods around us plopped from leaf to ground; the stars were low, blue-white, tentative; the wind-scent bore traces of fire, dryweed, rivermuck; the tssking drybush rattles swelled with a peaking breeze, as some distant cross-creek sleigh-nag tossed its neckbells.

After you have been five minutes in his company you cease to think that he is either homely or awkward.