Book Review: Lincoln in the Bardo

There are a variety of different words and phrases that can be used to describe George Saunders novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, a few are grotesque, haunting, and historically and philosophically thought provoking. The novel, and most recent winner of The Man Booker Prize, brings to question the accuracy, or lack there of, of our understanding of history. The novel uses an array of historical texts, newspaper articles, and civil war documents to portray a grieving Abraham Lincoln and the death of his son, Willie Lincoln. The more grotesque and thought provoking aspect of the novel consists of a series of conversations between characters, “ghosts”, inhabiting the graveyard where Willie Lincoln has recently been buried. These “ghosts” are stuck in the bardo, a term from Tibetan Buddhism defined as the state of existence between death and rebirth.

Saunders writes of Abraham Lincoln grieving the loss of his son and presents this alongside a string of comical and philosophical dialogues between the inhabitants of the graveyard. By writing the novel in this interwoven fashion, Saunders is able illustrate the concept of the known versus the unknown. This interesting stylistic choice progresses the novel forward, and keeps a readers attention captivated. It also forces a reader to question his or her own reality and contemplate the millennia old human question, what happens after death?

This thematic question flows throughout the novel and is laid beside other questions and themes, such as the difficulties in discerning fact from fiction. One place in the text that this is made evident is the many differing historical accounts of the night in which Willie Lincoln died. The accounts depicting the moon that night are all incredibly different. Some accounts note the “brilliance of the moon” others state “There was no moon.” Although we could trace the lunar cycles back to this date, and answer this question easily, the differing accounts of the remembrance of the moon function as an example of the ways in which memory can often be unreliable.

Similarly, the way in which Willie Lincoln is remembered varies across differing accounts. These differences are not only in the description of his personality, but also the ways in which his appearance is described. Like the variance in the remembrance of the moon and the description of Willie Lincoln’s appearance and personality, the accounts of a dinner party the Lincoln’s hosted are also filled with contradictions between one another.

Saunders stylistic choice to use historical documents as a method of progressing a story is ingenious. He somehow managed to meticulously organize a collection of excerpts from historical documents and fashion them into a coherent story. This is enhanced by weaving a sequence dialogues between a group of individuals caught between the realm of life and death. In doing this Saunders forces a reader to question their own reality and memory, discern fact from fiction, and to contemplate the known and the unknown.