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Galignani Bookstore in Paris, two or three blocks from the Louvre

Reader: Angus Miranda

My favorite book this year is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. How predictable! Isn’t this the recent winner of the Man Booker Prize? Shouldn’t Americans be banned from the Booker? (I said that — JZ) And haven’t there been enough books about Lincoln? Not enough, for sure, especially about Lincoln mourning the death of his son, Willie.

The night of Willie’s death, a state dinner is held. The Civil War is yet to begin. Many historians attend the dinner. In their accounts, they offer competing opinions on every available perspective at the event, from the perfunctory smiles of Lincoln and his wife, the inappropriateness of the dinner, to the color of the moon (was there even a moon at all?).

And then, death. Various accounts have it that Lincoln visited his son’s crypt to hold him in his arms. At least one account, the germ of the novel, is from Saunders’s wife’s cousin’s (probably neighbor’s grandma’s cook’s) source. But no one seemed to remember the scandalized ghosts at Oak Hill Cemetery, who all are witnesses to Lincoln’s visit. Of course there are ghosts, and rambunctious ones at that! It’s a cemetery, after all. Think of Slimer from Ghostbuster, the Ghostly Trio from Casper, and the spirits of Hogwarts from Harry Potter interacting with one another. Now, the story has just begun.

These ghosts, if you will, are in denial of what they are, and are preoccupied with the desires that last gripped them while they were still alive. For instance, there’s Hans Vollman who has an exaggerated penis due to his sexual desire frustrated by a beam that fell on his head. (Kind of like that guy in Gosiengfiao’s Nights of Serafina whose penis was crushed by a fallen log — JZ)

Another one, Roger Bevins III, grows several eyes, hands, and noses when his senses are stimulated. This is because when he changed his mind after he committed suicide, his intentions were to touch, taste, smell everything that he finds beautiful in this world (this character gets to speak the lyrical parts).

Most of the novel is set in the cemetery. Specifically, it is set in a bardo, that transitory state between two states of consciousness, in this novel between death and reincarnation. The term is Tibetan and the belief is Buddhist, but there are elements in this bardo that are similar to the Catholic purgatory. Usually, the bardo is just a pit stop for the dead on their way to the afterlife, but the likes of Hans, Roger, and Willie, yes, Willie Lincoln hang around for reasons mentioned earlier.

However, Willie cannot stay long here. In Saunders’s bardo, something bad happens to children who hang around instead of immediately passing on. This twist calls to mind an element of a George Saunders short story, something that is capricious but which propels the narrative with a force keenly felt during the final stretch.

Saunders’s jaunty rhythm pokes some fun at the deficiencies of history, but when talking about loss and death, he downplays his beat with compassionate tones. Indeed, the narrative gets cacophonic, what with the ghosts, all hungry for an audience, competing for extended performances at the soapbox. True, they are all entertaining, but in their torrent of talk, one can hear a chord too strong to miss: the sorrow of a father devastated by grief, written with a sort of kindness that is atypical of a work as wildly inventive as this.

And by the way, this is only the first novel of George Saunders. Someone stepping out and showing us something not in his usual mode is someone to look out for.

Honorable Mentions: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, A Schoolboy’s Diary and Other Stories by Robert Walser, The Sellout by Paul Beatty