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A beautifully written book about the afterlife, Lincoln in the Bardo is about the deceased son of Abraham Lincoln (a man who’s life was very consistently troubled so I was prepared to be sad going into this book). The book is specifically about the grief that the living experience after a loss and it’s just. so. sad. sometimes.

The weirdest book I've ever read

- Leah Smith

I wish I could just use that as the review, it's true and I feel like this is the kind of book where you don't want to know too much before going in. It's something you have to experience and reviewing it would give too much away. Sadly, I don't think that's what was in mind when I was sent a copy of this so, you'll just have to bear with me while I try and review this.

In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.
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.
Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

This is one of the most hyped books of recent years, everyone has heard of it, it topped bestseller lists and won awards, so when I got given the chance to receive a copy in return for a review I jumped at the chance. All I really knew about this was that it was about President Lincoln and the death of his son Willie and that is probably just the right amount of information for anyone to know before going in - knowing too much more would have scared me off reading this. This story is so uniquely told, it mixes real life events with fantastical fictional ones. It reads in places like an academic text and in others like a play, it offers an original take on a story that has been told thousands of times before.

It is a strange read - and had I known how it was presented and how the story was being told I might have been scared off of reading it at all and then I would have completely missed out on how wonderful this is. Yes it is a bit weird but don't let that put you off - the story is beautifully told. Like I said, this is a book that needs to be experienced without knowing too much, so don't take my word for it, grab a copy and make up your own mind.

I struggled with this. At its heart this is an epic, sweeping tale of Lincoln, the civil war and the many ghosts connected in between. What I found is an often disjointed story full of multiple, confusing narrators with little to no emotional attachment to anything that is going on around them.

The plot itself feels completely all over the place. I’m sure it’s suppose to be clever and deep in some kind of metaphysical level, but I just didn’t get it. I wanted wonderful storytelling, something to pull me in and grip me. This did none of that, and was a real drag to get through. Several times I put it down, and found it a chore to pick back up. Is it original? Yes, very much so - I’ve never read anything quite like it. But do I want something new? No. Why fix something that isn’t broke? I feel in recent years the Man Booker has been heavily biased towards ‘new’ kinds of storytelling, and rewards the innovative over quality story telling. This is that kind of book.

Not for me, but I applaud the originality.

I am honestly not sure what to make of this book. There are some beautiful and lilting phrases in it but the book as a whole didn't grip me; I found it depressing and very easy to put down. I suspect that I have missed or ignored something significant which would have helped me to make sense of this prize-winning book and so I shall probably try to re-read it.
Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for giving me a copy in exchange for this honest review.

During the American Civil War, President Lincoln’s beloved son, Willie, died. Newspapers report that Lincoln returned to his son’s crypt alone to grieve for his boy. Using this seed of history, George Saunders weaves a supernatural story of familial loss. Willie Lincoln finds himself trapped in a transitional realm known as the bardo, while other trapped spirits try to encourage him to move on and squabble amongst themselves over the best way to make this happen. Told over the course of a single night, this story describes the monumental struggle Willie faces following his death, and explores grief among both the living and the dead.

The narrative style of this book is unique. The majority is told through the voices of the characters (very similar to a play-script), with some chapters built from excerpts of historical texts. This style took some getting used to and often took the story on rambling tangents, but was a very effective way of telling the story.

I loved the characters. Willie meets lots of different ghosts in the bardo, who all have their own stories and kooky personalities. There are some bizarre features (like Hans Vollman’s giant member) which I didn’t really understand the point of but they certainly helped to enhance the eccentric, unconventional vibe of this book.

I would recommend Lincoln in the Bardo, not because it’s an excellent story, but simply for the experience of reading it. It is unusual, with a unique style and a good enough plot. A modern classic, definitely deserving of its Man-Booker Prize win.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I persevered to the end, and I DID enjoy this book, but it is truly strange. The oddity isn't just in the way it is written, but in the language that is used. I think it is worth trying, but don't blame me if you find it downright weird!

I obtained a digital copy of this book through Netgalley.

This was tedious and took ages to read.

I appreciate the experimental style of this entire story but I think this would have been more powerful if it was a shorter work and not a full-blown novel. I couldn't connect to anything. The only thing keeping me going was the interesting writing style.

I think if you enjoy stories that rely on the experimental writing style or if you like works in the style of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot then you may like this. I just think it was too long.

Obviously, this book is incredible, so many people know that already. But here's another massive thumbs up for it from me!

I honestly can not decide how I feel about this book, there were aspects that really worked for me and I connected with and there were aspects that didn't work for me and that I felt alienated by.

I guess I'll start with what rang true; I am intimately connected to several families who've lost children unexpectedly and I can say adamantly that the grief and grieving process depicted within is accurate with my own observations and experiences. Several passages discussing or describing a parents or a siblings grief reverberated through my core like a gong. I could easily connect particular family members with different characters processes from the narrative. Along those lines I could also correlate people from my own life with the lookie-loos, the mourners and the people accusing the family of not doing enough or dwelling on their loss.

I also found the picture the author painted of the Civil war and the casual racism inherent in basis of the war both confronting and necessary but also disturbingly similar to issues we are having in the 'modern' day. This work resonated with me emotionally because of the subject matter but that's about all it did.

The things that didn't work for me were the format and the religious allegory blatantly being shoved in my face. The easy one to start with is the format, incorporated throughout the narrative are snippets taken from many historical texts and personal journals from that time. I think this could have been done really well but I found with this there was an overabundance of them and they weren't woven into the story as naturally as I would have liked; lots of different writing style thrown in together was jarring like several chords played out of place or tune with the rest of the song.

I also wish that we were witness to more than just the single night that this encompasses; I feel this could have helped justify all the snippets that were included if they covered a broader range of time. Grief doesn't occur over a single night; its a process that takes months, years, lifetimes and I felt narrowing down that focus to a single night does the reader and the subject a disservice.

Now let's talk about the religious aspect of this book, I am not religious nor are any of the families I know that have lost children so I might be being oversensitive about this issue but this is just one of my buttons. I'm sure that President Lincoln being a product of his time did find solace or comfort in religion and I can accept that being depicted within the story but I also know it is no comfort to me or those close to me when remembering those we've lost. I felt the inclusion of an afterlife very similar to the Christian model of Heaven and Hell which we were led to by a priest of that faith and through only his eyes did we view it to be disingenuous. I personally would have preferred to be left not knowing what happened on the other side; so the reader could paint their own picture about what happens to those that journey on from the bardo.

I can understand why this won the Booker Prize in 2017. In common with many high concept books it is almost unreadable and very polarising. I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped, I'm probably too much of a traditionalist. To my view pretentious, to another taste unique and mesmerising!

I read this book on audiobook and honestly, had to fight through it. It was clearly too avant-garde and just NOT for me. The audiobook felt like it made so little sense, that for a while, I wondered if I was listening to the right book. Firstly, there are FAR too many narrators, it almost felt like one was just jumping in part way through another's speech and made it hard to focus, understand or enjoy what was happening. That being said, I really did enjoy some of the characterisation, the later chapters and the sense of sadness and clarity that the ending did bring.

Therefore, it's a hard one for me to rate, on the one hand, I can appreciate Saunders' brilliance, and the way that he was able to captivate me in the sadness towards the end of the book was heartbreaking, on the other hand, the beginning of this book is an absolute shambles, where the narration was so messy and I felt lost. All in all, if you tend to read more heavy stuff, and like more of Saunders' writing, I would say to give this a go, but if you're looking for something fun or enjoyable to read, find anything else.

I tried a couple of times to read this but it just wasn’t for me. I thought it started off well but it was like reading a playscript with the character’s name at the end of their input. I might have ploughed on with it because I really liked the idea behind it but then the bit abou about the Lincoln’s attending a party, told solely from extracts from different sources, was just tedious and lacking in narrative flow so I gave up!

I couldn't help thinking Lincoln in the Bardo was a mash-up of an adult version of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (the relationships between the ghosts), blended with Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo (ghosts not understanding why they're there, or where there is!), with a traditional historical account of the death of Willie Lincoln (and how it affected Lincoln's mood at a crucial point of the Civil War).

This is a wonderful, innovative novel, worthy of the Man Booker award. Sentimental, in an emotive way, silly, in a funny way, yet undeniably brilliant. A clever, sensitive novel, that belongs on the shelves of anyone appreciative of quality fiction.

Book kindly supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.

When I was given this book to read I knew that it had won the Booker Prize but not much else. I found it a difficult read as in the beginning it seemed to be a series of quotes from contemporary writing. The style then changed and I realised that we were dealing with ghosts, zombies ? living in the half life withing a cemetery. Again the style was written as quotes. Some so short that I read them without realizing who was speaking. Parts were touching and humourous but it was not for me.

Lincoln in the Bardo tells the story of Willie Lincoln’s death and his battle to stay in the “bardo” (an in between space for the dead before they move on to the afterlife) to see his father.

The story is told through a combination of quotes from a variety of sources but also through a script like format. I’m not a fan of either of these formats so that didn’t really bode well.

To be completely honest most of the time this book was just confusing, frustrating and a little boring!

I thought the overall story about these ghost waiting around in a kind of limbo and sharing their stories was an interesting one but the format and style of the book just wasn’t for me.

I’m not a huge fan of historical books and although I understood the importance of these historical aspects, for me, it detracted from the key message which is the grief and feeling of utter despair felt by Lincoln at the loss of his son. The parts of the story I enjoyed most were those that reflected the sadness of death especially the death of a child.

Not a great read and I really could have DNF’ed this one but I’m probably not the right audience, and had I known about the style of writing before I chose to read it, I probably wouldn’t have.

2 stars ⭐️ ⭐️

Thank you to the NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy. All opinions are my own and provided willingly.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2017, this is Saunders first novel, him having been associated with collections of short historical stories prior to this.
The book, perhaps unsurprisingly is unusual. It is set in 1862 and surrounds the death of President Lincoln’s 11 year old son Willie, who succumbed to typhoid. It did take me a while to make sense of the story as it is written not unlike a play script, with a couple of main narrators talking to the reader, interspersed with some real and what seemed to be fake accounts of events at the time.
The three main narrators are dead, having been so for approximately 20 years, but they do not all realise it. They just think the coffins they reside in are their sick cots. There are also other dead spirits attracted to the death of Willie that talk to the reader also, so it becomes quite over layered at times.
For its curious approach, the main narrators, Volman, Bevans and the Reverend offer the lighter satirical balance to a very poignant and sentimental depiction of Lincoln’s grief and loss of his son. It flows quite quickly for something so potentially dark, albeit there is always a sense of where is this story going? You are never sure if you are being taken on a mystical, magical detour and I found myself over think things as I read – a mistake perhaps.
I quite enjoyed the book, whilst also feeling a little let down. I could readily recognise the talent in the writing, which warranted its award, but ultimately the book should carry the reader and I found as the denouement approached it didn't quite pull it together for me & parts of it felt quite disconnected - nor was I left feeling buoyant about the writing. Perhaps my reading palate is not quite sophisticated enough for this type of oblique, artsy writing style but I was glad to have dipped my toe in & experienced it nonetheless.

I seem to be alone in not either loving or hating this book. I was ok, not great, not awful probably just not my sort of thing.

I won't ruin it for others

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31929623-lincoln-in-the-bardo

This could be my book of 2018. This was majestic.

I thank NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for providing me an ARC copy of this novel that I freely chose to review.
First, in case you have not read the book or anything about it, and wonder what the bardo of the title refers to, it is a Buddhist concept (in Tibetan Buddhism, it seems, and I’ve read that Saunders is a Buddhist) referring to an intermediate state between death and rebirth (between two lives on Earth).
Now that we’ve cleared that out, if you follow my blog, you might remember that I reviewed some of the books that had made the long and the short-list of the Booker Prize. I enjoyed some of them more than others, but I had not read the book that actually won the Prize, and when I saw it come up on NetGalley, I could not resist. I had heard and read a great deal about it, and I felt I had to check it for myself.
This is not a standard novel. It is composed of fragments, divided into chapters, some that appear to contain extracts from a variety of written historical documents (diaries, newspapers, books, memoirs) which provide background to the events, Lincoln’s presidency and the tragic death of his son, Willie, victim to typhoid fever. Other chapters, also fragmented, contain first-person observations by a large variety of characters that ‘live’ at the cemetery where Willie is laid to rest. Call them ghosts, spirits, or whatever you prefer, they seem to have been there for a while, some longer than others, and they interact with each other, while at the same time talking about themselves and taking a keen interested on little Willie Lincoln and his father. We have the spirits of black and white characters, young and old, men and women, well-off citizens and paupers, people who had lead seemingly morally exemplary lives and others who had gone down the wrong path, some who had taken their own lives, others who had died by accident or in bed. There are some actively atoning for their sins while others only seek entertainment. They are a motley crew, and although we hear mostly from three of these characters (Hans Vollman, Roger Bevins, and the Reverend Everly Thomas) and from Willie, they all make important contributions and help create a whole that is more than its parts.
The structure of the novel is puzzling and intriguing, and although it made me think of postmodernism and pastiche, the methodology used to construct the novel is not an attempt at emptying it of meaning or making us reflect upon the artificiality and futility of seeking truth and understanding. The death of a child (even if we are not parents, most of us are close enough to the children of relatives and/or friends to be able to imagine what it must be like) is a terrible tragedy and although there are light moments in the novel, there are touching and moving ones as well. Some of the fragments emphasise the diverse opinions and judgements about Lincoln and his presidency (by the way, although some of these fragments are real documents from the period, others have been created by Saunders, and it is not evident while reading which ones are which), but everybody agrees on the devastating effect the death of his son had over the president. The hopeful ending might feel somewhat surprising but is open to interpretation, like the rest of the text.
There are fragments that will make readers wonder about religious beliefs, others that question the social order, racial ideas, and the Civil War. But I fully understand the puzzlement of many readers who leave negative reviews on this book (and the negative reviews are many) stating that they don’t understand anything, it goes over their heads, and it is not really a novel. Some readers, familiar with Saunders’s short-stories, prefer those to the novel, but as I have not read them, I cannot comment.
Here some examples of the style of writing in the book (in this case, I definitely recommend prospective readers to check inside or get a sample to see if it suits their reading taste).
…only imagine the pain of that, Andrew, to drop one’s precious son into that cold stone like some broken bird & be on your way.
Mr. Collier (shirt clay-stained at the chest from his fall, nose crushed nearly flat) was constantly compelled to float horizontally, like a human compass needle, the top of his head facing in the direction of whichever of his properties he found himself most worried about at the moment.
The money flows out, tens of thousands of men wait, are rearranged to no purpose, march pointlessly over expensive bridges thrown up for the occasion, march back across the same bridges, which are then torn down. And nothing whatsoever is accomplished.
Blame and Guilt are the furies that haunt houses where death takes children like Willie Lincoln; and in this case there was more than enough blame to go around.
The book collects a large number of endorsements and reviews at the end, and I’ve chosen this one by James Marriott, from The Times, for its briefness and accuracy: ‘The book is as weird as it sounds, but it’s also pretty darn good.’
In sum, this is a highly experimental book, for readers who enjoy a challenge and don’t mind a non-linear narrative, who enjoy literary fiction not focused on plot, and are intrigued by new writers and what makes critics tic. It is not an easy read, but it is a rewarding one and I, for one, hope to catch up on some of the author's previous books.