Lincoln in the Bardo

A Novel

By: George Saunders

Narrated by: Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, George Saunders, Carrie Brownstein, Don Cheadle, Lena Dunham, Bill Hader, Kirby Heyborne, Keegan-Michael Key, Julianne Moore, Megan Mullally, Susan Sarandon, Ben Stiller, Various

Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

***WINNER OF THE 2018 AUDIE AWARD FOR AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR***

The long-awaited first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented

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?

The 166-person full cast features award-winning actors and musicians, as well as a number of Saunders’ family, friends, and members of his publishing team, including, in order of their appearance:

Nick Offerman as HANS VOLLMAN
David Sedaris as ROGER BEVINS III
Carrie Brownstein as ISABELLE PERKINS
George Saunders as THE REVEREND EVERLY THOMAS
Miranda July as MRS. ELIZABETH CRAWFORD
Lena Dunham as ELISE TRAYNOR
Ben Stiller as JACK MANDERS
Julianne Moore as JANE ELLIS
Susan Sarandon as MRS. ABIGAIL BLASS
Bradley Whitford as LT. CECIL STONE
Bill Hader as EDDIE BARON
Megan Mullally as BETSY BARON
Rainn Wilson as PERCIVAL “DASH” COLLIER
Jeff Tweedy as CAPTAIN WILLIAM PRINCE
Kat Dennings as MISS TAMARA DOOLITTLE
Jeffrey Tambor as PROFESSOR EDMUND BLOOMER
Mike O’Brien as LAWRENCE T. DECROIX
Keegan-Michael Key as ELSON FARWELL
Don Cheadle as THOMAS HAVENS
and
Patrick Wilson as STANLEY “PERFESSER” LIPPERT
with
Kirby Heyborne as WILLIE LINCOLN,
Mary Karr as MRS. ROSE MILLAND,
and Cassandra Campbell as Your Narrator

©2017 George Saunders (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

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

“Grief guts us all, but rarely has it been elucidated with such nuance and brilliance as in Saunders’s Civil War phantasmagoria. Heartrending yet somehow hilarious, Saunders’s zinger of an allegory holds a mirror to our perilous current moment.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“An extended national ghost story . . . As anyone who knows Saunders’s work would expect, his first novel is a strikingly original production.”—The Washington Post

Otherworldly Brilliance

Lincoln in the Bardo is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever listened to - and make no mistake - this one is meant to be listened to. 166 individual narrators (led by Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, author George Saunders, and the incomparably sweet Kirby Heyborne as Willie) came together to voice this wildly surreal audiobook. And while that might sound like a production stunt, the breadth of voices is necessary to create the immersive cacophony effect (almost a Greek chorus of Americana) - because Saunders' first full-length novel, a hugely ambitious work that delivers a devastatingly accurate portrait of grief, is entirely voiced by ghosts.

The listener finds himself in a Georgetown Cemetary where young Willie Lincoln has just been laid to rest. The Civil War has only just begun, and Willie's grieving father (the president) returns to the graveyard in a state of stumbling and stricken shambles to look at and hold the body of his boy. This unorthodox behavior from a visitor triggers shocked confusion among the self-unaware dead who wonder what it means for their own fates. In rounding out his tale, Saunders depicts the real events of the time (those things happening outside of the graveyard) entirely through historical snippets and citations, and you eventually come to realize that these are also the impressions of the dead. The effect is such that the listener feels like he's spying in on a world completely outside of time, and defined only by the shifting perceptions of ethereal spirits. It's quite literally otherworldly, but the concerns of the voices feel recognizable, real, and at times contemporary, as every stratum of society is represented among the cast. Without a doubt this is one of the strangest books in our store - but please do not be discouraged by its oddity. There's some serious genius here.

Amazing!!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This is my first audio book and I chose it because of the 166 narrators!! And, because I have long enjoyed George Saunders writing. It was helpful that I read the first chapters on amazon, so I knew that the citations that were spoken were part of the actual text. Saunders has written a unique, compelling, surprising and touching story about a father's love for his son, the afterlife and so much more.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Lincoln in the Bardo?

The moment when Lincoln returns to the cemetery and the characters in the "bardo" are watching and marveling at the moment that he cradles his dead son. These souls are shocked and enthralled at the sight of "one of them" being held, touched, honored. It instills hope that the same could happen for them.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

I just LOVED the ensemble of narrators. It was also really interesting to recognize specific narrators (Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, Susan Sarandon, Julianne Moore, Lena Dunham) and consider why each person was chosen for the specific voice. This contemplation of the afterlife, and the voices of those who are caught in between worlds was fascinating.

Any additional comments?

This is such a unique story. I listened to it TWICE, as there were so many nuances and the story was so compelling I wanted to hear it again.

Distracting comments

Any additional comments?

The content of the book was wonderful, however I could not make it past chapter 3 due to all of the interruptions mid-sentence quoting a source. Could they not have put them at the end of a chapter or at the end of the book? Terribly distracting interruptions interferred with the story.

Profoundly intense. A+

This book knows no literary comparison. 10/10 stars on every level. The Audible reading is a theatre, with eyes closed.. a soulful, gorgeous, haunting dip into all things spiritual. Read along, or listen only but don't miss a word. Rated R for language and situational descriptions.

hard to follow . did not like it

very hard to follow. had to back track a lot and still didn't make sense. too much jumping around with too many characters

Insanely Imaginative

Emphasis on 'insane.' Incredibly creative, vivid, graphic, hilarious, and haunting. I will be chewing on it for weeks to come. Still not sure if I liked it but know that I loved it. The performances were exceptional. I am tempted to read it in book format to see what else I can glean from it.

Tour de Force

Every now and then a work of art, be it a piece of music, visual art, a poem or literature, will take my breath away because of its originality, insight, beauty and sheer genius. Lincoln in the Bardo is just such a work. Often, it seems, when a book is labeled original or creative, it is code for incomprehensible. Happily, that is not the case here—Saunders’ original approach only makes his characters more accessible, conveying their thoughts and feelings in a way that is deeply affecting.

Interweaving history, spirituality, fiction and biography, the book revovles around the illness and death of Lincoln’s son, Willie, as told from both sides of the grave. I confess that this episode from history especially touches me as I can recall reading a biography of Lincoln as a 10-year-old and bursting into shocked tears when Willie died. The book captures Lincoln’s profound grief at the death of his favorite son and yet also contains many moments of humor and insight into the human condition.


The full-cast narration wonderfully enhances the book’s content and even the inclusion of footnotes, while a little distracting at first, is done very well—a real challenge in an audiobook. It is very rare that I give a book 5 stars all the way around, but this one is fully deserving of the highest ranking. Highly recommended!

Hard to get through, but worth it

I listened to the book on tape. Honestly, this book was meant to be read out loud, and it would be pretty irritating to read it on paper. Except for intuitive guesses, you wouldn’t know who was saying what until you get to the end of each passage of speech.

This story would have been better told if it was narrated in a more conventional way. But there is nothing conventional about this book.

I thought the interspersed excerpts from primary source documents was an interesting but unnecessary decision. Maybe one or two to set off each chapter, but whole chapters of these things?

They interrupt the narrative flow and were pretty irritating at first. Because I was listening to the book, I thought there were a whole family of people named “Offset” who had all apparently kept diaries etc and worked in the Lincoln household. I knew this couldn’t be the case so I looked at an actual copy of the book and discovered it was “Opp Cit.” I was hearing, a citation device.

Each star I give to this book is for creativity and experimentation. I really liked the story as a whole, but it wasn’t easy to get through. This would have been a five star book if Saunders had made a couple concessions to his audience.

In the book on tape specifically, Nick Offerman and David Sedaris do a great job of performing the parts of the two main ghosts.

“You were a joy” and “All gifts are temporary”

Early in George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son Willie horribly dies of typhoid on February 20, 1862, after a big party at the White House, and the boy's ghost joins some adult ghosts who tell parts of their stories and welcome Willie into their Oak Hill Cemetery state of denial. Mr. Vollman was brained by a beam before he could consummate his marriage with his much younger wife, Mr. Bevins slashed his wrists in despair over losing his male beloved, and the Preacher’s face is frozen in a perpetual look of terror. All three, like their ghostly compatriots, have resolved to stay in the cemetery instead of moving on to wherever they're supposed to go, because 1) they can’t accept that they’re dead, referring to their corpses as “sick forms,” their coffins as “sick boxes,” and their tombs as “sick houses,” and 2) they have unfinished business with the “earlier place” (the world of the living), an unfulfilled desire, a need for revenge, and so on. The many imagined stories of the lives and deaths of the many ghosts—including people who lived throughout US history and from white and black races and high and low classes etc.—are varied and interesting, ranging from the profane and comical to the sublime and poignant. Kids' ghosts usually don't linger, but Willie has a strong will and is confused about what has happened to him. He wants to hang around his sick house in hopes that his father will visit so he can talk with him and find out what happened, etc.

Among the sections of that kind of fantasy (that recall Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place and Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book), Saunders interpolates many brief (sometimes lasting only a phrase) excerpts from myriad historical sources on Lincoln and his son and wife and the Civil War: eye-witness accounts, newspaper articles, letters, history books, and the like. The many sources give a composite view of Willie, Lincoln, and the Civil War and ground the fantasy elements. In time the quotations and the source titles cited after them started accumulating into a mass of historicity that convey a hint of the myriad published words and thoughts devoted to Lincoln. Interestingly, sometimes the sources obviously contradict each other, as when different ones say that on the night of the White House reception the moon was full, crescent, or obscured by clouds, or as when different sources say Lincoln was the ugliest man they’d ever met or the handsomest, and so on.

For the audiobook, each different ghost and historical source has a different reader--there are 166 of them--so it's a little chaotic, but it works when you get used to it. The 166 readers of the audiobook are mostly fine, especially Nick Offerman as Vollman and David Sedaris as Bevins, and the several readers who are not so skilled or appealing are only a minor distraction.

After finishing the book, I looked up bardo, finding that it derives from Tibetan Buddhism and refers to the phase between death and rebirth, which lasts longer or shorter depending on one’s life etc. Saunders implies no rebirth, and I think he’s using bardo as a kind of hellish limbo which lasts while spirits of the dead cannot let go of their former lives or accept their deaths.

I really liked the odd book! The fantasy parts are funny, awful, or poignant, the historical parts informative, appalling, or moving. I went through four Kleenexes through the first twenty-seven chapters (the 108 chapters in the novel are short, some lasting only a paragraph or two). I came to appreciate Lincoln more, given Willie’s early death and the intense hatred many Americans felt towards the President back then. The book demonstrates that the mid-war Lincoln was hardly the revered greatest president in the history of the USA that he’s perceived to be today, but rather an isolated, unsure, unpopular, and reluctant war leader. Saunders connects Lincoln’s loss of Willie to the terrible casualties of the Civil War and to the president’s growing sympathy for (or eroding aversion to) African Americans.

Some readers may be bored by the book because “nothing happens.” Indeed, the main plot lasts for only a few nights of narrative time and concerns the development of Willie’s ghost and the processing of his death by Lincoln, but the ways in which Willie affects the other ghosts and Saunders’ imagining of the nocturnal “life” of the cemetery and the personalities and biographies and 19th century voices of Vollman, Bevins, and the Preacher (and other ghosts) are absorbing and pleasurable.

It might be an unbearably painful book for people who have lost children, though it also might help them experience a kind of catharsis. I enjoyed, learned from, and was moved by the audiobook.

Unique

Abraham Lincoln: An American giant, perhaps that nation's greatest president. Here he is, brought so low and so humanized that one cannot help but to love the man for his pain and the depth of his love.

A must read!