AMAZING READ!
Lincoln in the Bardo
By: George Saunders
Read: 02/22/18 - 02/24/18 and 03/06/18 -03/10/18
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Goodreads: February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.
From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul
My thoughts: I had to read this book twice. The first time I fought so hard against the writing style and the block quotes that I couldn’t (refused to) enjoy the book. I swear I was going to hate it. The chapters of block quotes from multiple, cited sources felt lazy to me, Like, the author couldn't bother to take time to weave the sources into his own narrative. But once I got over myself and really started to get into the flow of the book, I saw that each quote was picked with care. They began where the last one left off, creating their own seamless, narrative from many different voices. Once I finished the first time, I had to reread it so I could see what I missed during my first read, when I was so focused on hating the layout.
Saunders uses nonfiction block quotes to set the scenes and uses fictional dialogues to create the story. I really enjoyed the camaraderie between Bevins and Vollman. You can clearly see that they are old friends. Bevins runs off on a descriptive tangent and Vollman has to gently reel him back. But there is a large, varied cast of characters; ranging from a drunk, profanity-spewing couple to worried mothers to cruel soldiers.
The book is heavy with the themes of loss. Mostly focusing on the parent’s loss of a child. I felt the sorrow of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln so clearly, I ached. That is a mark of a great book, one that can make me feel something. I had to hug my son many times during this read.
“(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 fussing and worry and doing. Only there is nothing left to do.”
I highly recommend this book, for fiction and nonfiction lovers alike.