Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel

Named One of Paste's Best Novels of the Decade - Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR - One of Time's Ten Best Novels of the Year - A New York Times Notable Book One of O: The Oprah Magazine's Best Books of the Year

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 returns, alone, to the crypt several times 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 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 to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

 

"A luminous feat of generosity and humanism."--Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review

 

"A masterpiece."--Zadie Smith

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368 pages

Average rating: 6.67

227 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

ediehas
Feb 28, 2025
10/10 stars
Beautifully tragic, but incredibly imaginative story on life and death, grief and moving on, told through the death of Willie Lincoln and the president’s visit to the crypt to hold his dead son. Very unique narrative but takes a few pages to fully get into it. Told through several different sources and conversations, mostly in a Greek chorus type format, including stories and personal accounts from people associated with the Lincolns and commenting on Lincoln's grief, and those stuck in the bardo, a somewhat purgatory state between death and rebirth, who are guiding young willie through this new state. In each of the conversations and reports on the events that occurred, Saunders offers some similar and some vastly differentiating recollections from each of the sources on what transpired based off their own personal feelings, emphasizing our shared humanity to let emotion affect our recollections. Definitely one of my favorites.
Anonymous
Jan 26, 2025
8/10 stars
About the states of acceptance, and realization, reluctance, and resistance, 'Lincoln in the Bardo' is a streams-of-consciousness tale that is about the points of view which often get fiercely ignored once they cease being 'around'; and attempts to implore: how could a form or the formless stop simply being.
Felinelo
Jan 24, 2025
2/10 stars
This was a "hard no for me Dawg"
stackedlibrarian
Dec 11, 2024
8/10 stars
Maybe because I listened to it and didn’t actually read it, but I found it to be difficult to follow. The narrators are good although I recognized most of their voices, so it was like “oh David Sedaris is telling me a story” or “know it’s that mustache guy on Parks and Rec”. The asides to give what I am assuming were footnotes and/or references was annoying and very distracting. The chapters that I could just immerse in were weird and wonderful giving me a glimpse of why it’s won so many awards and received stellar reviews.
Anonymous
Nov 18, 2024
6/10 stars
While I appreciate Saunders's use of dialogue and his exploration of familial relationships and grief as cathartic, the large number of characters and the constant introduction of new narratives made me feel isolated. I connected with the central theme of being stuck in an intermediate state from physical existence to nothing, unable to move on from being alive, but the sheer volume of voices felt overwhelming.
3.5/5

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