Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders

Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders
Published February 2017 by Random House Publishing
Source: my ecopy courtesy of the publisher, thru Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
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 returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body.


My Thoughts: 
When I started to see this one around, I knew I wanted to read it. Not because I was interested in the summary (I hadn't even read it), but because I have heard so great things about Saunders' Tenth of December. I sort of love going into a book completely unprepared, only expecting that the writing would be very good.

If you've read this blog for long, you know that I'm not one for books with ghosts and other such supernatural doings. So when I tell you that this book, largely told by spirits caught in limbo, will almost certainly be on my top ten list at the end of the year, you'll begin to understand how impressed I was with Lincoln In The Bardo.

"What I mean to say is, 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 flattened at the memory.

the reverend everly thomas 

And yet.

roger begins iii 

And yet no one had ever come here to hold one of us, while speaking so tenderly. 

hans coleman 

Ever.

roger begins iii"

Bardo, a Tibetan word, literally means "intermediate state" or "in-between state." In Lincoln In The Bardo, young Willie Lincoln has just been "laid to rest." But he is not at rest. Nor are the denizen's of the cemetery whose own stories are woven in with Willie's. Along the way Saunders intersperses nonfiction passages (which may or may not be actual nonfiction) about the last days of young Willie and the toll it took on his parents. We're all familiar with Mary Todd Lincoln's profound grief, but Saunders shows us the quiet, profound grief of a many who is not just carrying the weight of his own grief but that of the families whose sons he has sent to war to be killed.

In lesser hands, the multitude of story tellers and the mixing in of the nonfiction into the story could have been a mess. In Saunders' hands, for my money, it was brilliant. I loved this book from the first sentence "On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen" to the devastated father riding away from the cemetery in the end.

Now I need to go find a copy of Tenth of December...and maybe everything else Saunders has ever written.