Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

 What is the strangest book you’ve ever read?  Lincoln in the Bardo is definitely going on that list for me.  This was one of the most unique books I’ve ever read.  This was the January pick for the Rogue (FLICKS) Book and Movie Club, and it provides for some good discussion.

In February 1862,  Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s eleven-year-old son, Willie, died of typhoid.  The loss of their son affected both greatly.  It was said that Abraham Lincoln would visit Willie in his crypt and would hold his dead body.  From this historical snippet, Saunders have crafted a great tale that takes place over the first night that Willie is entombed, and Lincoln has come to visit. The graveyard is full of souls that are stuck between life and the afterlife.  The three main souls are Roger Bevins III, a man who committed suicide, Hans Vollman, a man who died when a beam hit him on the night he was going to consummate his marriage with his young wife, and the Reverend Everly Thomas, a pastor who was afraid of going to hell and is stuck in the in between. 

This book is hard to describe.  I read through it quickly.  It was brief snippets of stories told from the various ghosts.  There are over 100 different characters in the book.  You learn about their pasts as well as the current happenings in the cemetery.  There are also chapters that have the history of what was going on at that time.  Some of these snippets are real history from books, and some are made up.  What I found amusing about them is different people remembered different things – the color of someone’s eyes was different depending on the narrator or there was a moon in the sky or not also depending on the narrator.

I enjoyed the unique way this story was put together as it is always fun to read something completely different at times.  It also made me puzzle over life and death during the time that my own grandmother was dying.  The people in the in-between seemed to be caught there as there was something in the real world that they just couldn’t let go.  It could be their wife, or daughters, or something that had been undone.  The pastor was afraid that he would go to hell from what he saw at the end, although he couldn’t think of what he had done wrong.  After they were able to let go, they passed on to the afterlife.  It also made me think about the great love that Lincoln had for his son, and the great loss.  I also thought about the so many parents of that time who were losing their children during the civil war.  It was a thoughtful novel.

Favorite Quotes: 

“I have grown comfortable having these Dead for company, and find them agreeable companions, over there in their Soil & cold stones Houses.”

“Strange, isn’t it?  To have dedicated one’s life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one’s life only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one’s labors utterly forgotten?”

Book Source:  Birthday gift from my friend Jen.