Book 25 - Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Reading date - September 2020

I got this book as part of the reading club at my old job.  It was the last book I got before I left, which was in December.  It's been lolling around on my shelf for ages and only read it when a friend of mine started reading it and said it was really good. 

My reading has slowed down a lot recently...I always go through phases like this, I read everything I can get my hands on and then it slows down.  I think this is the only book I've read in September..I am currently reading The Year of the Runaways and I'm taking my time with it.  I don't want to be reading it just to get it finished because it is about something that has never been written about before but is something very close to my heart.

Anyway, what's this Lincoln in the Bardo like? Firstly, I keep reading it as Lincoln in the Bando..

I had no idea what "in the bardo" meant so I googled it.  It is taken from Tibetan culture, Wiki says: "used loosely, "bardo" is the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth...after death and before one's next birth, when one's consciousness is not connected with a physical body, one experiences a variety of phenomena".

So, it's kind of like a waiting room where your soul and spirit go before it's passed onto the next body.  The story takes one factual event and weaves a whole fictional story from it.  This alone sounds totally banal and does the book no justice.

I have never read a book like this before in my life. It is broken down into chapters of what really happened and then chapters of what the dead folk are talking about.  It is written in quotes, once you get used to that, it is a very good story.

I liken it to riding with a headless horseman on a dark and windy night, occasionally stopping and gathering your thoughts whilst the horeseman gets a drink (god knows how he drinks it though, as he has no head).  It's a wild ride and it's a book I'd recommend.


 


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