LINCOLN IN THE BARDO by George Saunders ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“(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.”

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I’m not sure how I made it though this beautifully strange book without sobbing, but I did. A son dies, a father grieves, and countless souls stuck in the corridor between life and afterlife are changed forever. Abraham Lincoln is probably one of the most written about figures in history, but there’s never been anything like this.

Through the bits of historical commentary (some real, some fake) and ghostly monologues, I realized that everyone has a story to tell. Tales of splendor and tales of regret, tales of unrealized opportunities and unfinished business, tales of love and lust and friendship and growth and all the things said and unsaid. What are we without our stories? Who are we? None of us get to look back to tell our stories in retrospect. But the souls inside this book do, and they will make you feel.

I was choked with emotion throughout, both for the grief of what can be lost and for the touching love a parent can have for their child, both told gracefully here. It reads almost like a play, with speaking parts and narrating characters like Shakespeare’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern guiding you along. There’s laughter and sorrow and a ton of wild imagery, some that will never leave my head.

I can see how Saunders’ short story prowess is utilized here, a grand experiment in voice, style, and form. Every new character has its own way of speaking, it’s own medium for storytelling (some in jumbled slang, some in fractioned sentences with little punctuation, some in the form of a written letter, some in mostly profanity). A combination of tenses and perspectives and exposition. For historical fiction, you really get the bang for your buck here.

If you want something fresh, something deep, and something you’ve never seen before, this is the one you want. It’s silly and gorgeous and odd, strangely comforting and expectedly magnificent. To truly examine life, you have to examine death, and Saunders will give you plenty of reason to examine your own story, whatever it is.