Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Whenever I sit down to read the book that appeared on the most Top Ten and Best of lists of the previous year, I am a little unsure whether or not knowing the hype will harm my experience of the book. It's certainly been the case that sometimes my expectations have been sky-high, and the book merely competent. While that might have been a delightful surprise if I'd happened upon the book by accident, when bearing all the weight of the accolades, it ends up being disappointing instead.  I'm very glad to say that that is not what happened with Lincoln in the Bardo.

It took me a little bit to get into it, which is no surprise, given how experimental the book is in many ways. It is all told through voices, but not presented as lines in a play, but more like long quotes that are popped out from a text, with the speaker noted beneath. Indeed, this is introduced with snippets from histories of Lincoln's administration. I was never entirely clear on whether or not all these snippets were real or fictional, but it didn't matter to me while I was reading, as I grasped what Saunders was doing.

What we get through these historical snippets is a widely varied account of the days leading up to the days of Lincoln's son, or of Lincoln himself, They disagree on nearly every point, leading to a cacophony of opinion on the man and the events around his son's death. This is unsettling, in a very good way that destabilizes the notion of an objective account.

Then we flip to interspersed chapters in the graveyard where Willie Lincoln has been laid to, well, not quite rest. While most people who are dead disappear quickly, there are those who have not relinquished their hold on the material world, who, indeed, seem often not to realize that they are dead, because the act of realizing that would be the start of a movement away from the world, and they cling to something about what they were so strongly they will not be moved. Not right away, anyway.

These sections look very similar to the historical snippets, and for some reason, once I recognized the form of this book was going to take, it was like the whole thing clicked into place, bam, and I was in. We hadn't even gotten to most of the themes, but it didn't matter. It was that incredible feeling you get sometimes when you're reading a story or watching a movie, and this utter certainty that the creator knows what they're doing and will in no way fuck this up settles over you. It doesn't happen often. (These are often difficult stories! It's not about content, it's about this strange feeling I get sometimes that this storyteller will lead me through these events just perfectly.)

From here, the book is about grief, about shock, about the difficulties these shades have in giving up their lives. (One keeps referring to coffins as sick-beds, and other euphemisms to disguise the fact he died many years before.) In the process, they are no longer whole beings, whittled down to an idee fixe that is keeping them tied to the ground of the cemetery. Willie, being a child, should have left right away, but does not. This is partly because his father keeps coming to visit him, and even pulls the child's body from the coffin in the mausoleum to cradle him, thus shocking and impressing the ghosts.  The long-term ghosts have incorporeal bodies that are distorted to reflect what they have become, exaggerated features that evoke both obsession, and, in some strange way, the way our memories of the dead get shaped by the years.

Willie is in danger of being enclosed in some ethereal stone, trapped, and the ghosts try to free him. At the same time, we get glimpses of the Civil War, and the racism that attends even the dead, with the separate burial ground for Black men and women, and the ways in which prejudices do not disappear. In many ways, to speak no ill of the dead is to do them a disservice in all their complexity.

We also have elements of the Tibetan Bardo, as the spirits are bombarded by voices, pulled by winds, tempted to go beyond by voices that are likely not those of their loved ones. Some succumb, no one knows what waits after, and with one exception, none have the faith to make that move. (The one who has faith also has knowledge and is terrified of what lies beyond.)

Lincoln in the Bardo is such a weird and wonderful book, and I was completely engrossed the entire time I was reading it. There's so much here, so much complexity, that I will want to read it again at some point. And then possibly again.