Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
What books should everyone read before they die?Add Book
Not Available
Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
George Saunders
Literature
Sean Rafferty
Apr 18, 2019
Experiments with form but still manages to infuse the novel with humour, pathos and great imagination. A worthy Booker Prize Winner.
0
Add Reply
James Mustich
Dec 3, 2019
Saunders's acclaimed novel came out as I was in the home stretch of finishing the writing of 1,000 Books, and it took me longer than it should have to get around to reading it. It’s astonishing. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, “bardo” is the intermediate state between death and rebirth. So it might seem strange to find Abraham Lincoln wandering through it, even in a novel. What’s even stranger is that the work is composed in hundreds of short passages, either quoted from historical sources or, more prevalently, spoken by the spirits of fictional characters who abide in the cemetery in which the president has come to bury his eleven-year-old son, Willie, in February of 1862. Taking historical anecdotes about Lincoln’s anguish as inspiration, Saunders has fashioned a fiction that is weird, wise, generous, tender, comic, and utterly heartbreaking, its multitude of voices creating a music that embraces grief and loss, being and nothingness, love and death and yearning. Don’t miss it—and stick with it: the chorus of voices can be disorienting at first, until the music of their expression assembles a bewitching melody.
0
Add Reply
Debra Hanff
May 23, 2020
Loved this. Apparently the audio version has an enormous number of narrators, some famous performers, others not.
0
Add Reply
Lana
Nov 5, 2021
A different, difficult read that pinpoints grief in its awful exactness.
0
Add Reply
Agree (9)
Life's too short (3)
Want to read
Post Comment
"1,000 Books To Read Before You Die" is a registered trademark of Workman Publishing, Inc. Based on the book: 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich, (Workman Publishing Co., Inc.: © 2018 James Mustich)
All other website content © 2018-2024 The Company of Books LLC.