Lincoln in the Bardo by George SaundersMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was such an...experience...as an audiobook, I'm having a tough time imagining it in print. In truth, it is ALMOST five stars for me, fostering imagination and creativity in the genre of "historical fiction" in a way few other books have done. But there were times that the 100+ person cast of voices felt like sensory overload, and there were perhaps a few too many gratuitous sexual references and nineteenth-century f-bombs. In terms of that latter item, I think the audiobook did not help -- the discontinuity in emotional energy across the roles was jarring and sometimes annoying. And yet, there were times when sex and cursing added to the...well, not quite dystopia...the bardo. "Bardo" was something I knew little about--evidently a Tibetan Buddhist concept of a state between death and rebirth. I think that actually helped my experience and understanding of the narrative as I had NO expectations. The initial delve into the pastiche of non-fiction quotations was a bit off-putting, but I stuck with it, remembering a similar sense when reading my first David Foster Wallace essay in Consider the Lobster. When the narrative returns to this framework it is much more effective, holding up a mirror to historical reception, blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
This is a story about a father and a son. This is a story about a president and our narratives. And maybe we can consider historical narrative as its own bardo--shaping and moulding a new creature for whatever legacy of rebirth we deem to give it.
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