Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders

We had been loved, I say, and remembering us,
even many years later, people would smile,
briefly gladdened at the memory.

In June I moved house again, from the dizzy heights of Penarth to the, er, misty heights of Taff’s Well and into my own home for the first time in a while. During this upheaval there was no great purge, but there was a brief hiatus once again whilst the majority of my library collection disappeared into tens of large boxes, only to reappear very recently, a bit worse the wear for the regular buffeting between rooms being decorated and, by the looks of the fist-shaped holes in some of them, a bit of youthful pugilism delivered by three young boys with nothing better to do than punch the daylights out of some defenceless cardboard.

So, I was forced to read some of the more recently acquired books which were yet to be added to the “Yet to be Read” shelves at the end of my run of bookcases and were instead picking up grey fluff on the floating shelf in my bedroom. Among them were the collected short stories of Angela Carter, the works of Michel de Montaigne, Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces (both of which I’d owned for ages and of course I’ve read, honest, in parts at least, but never cover to cover), two Stewart Lee books, the esoterically entitled Horse Destroys The Universe by the equally esoteric Cyriak Harris, and Tom Waits on Tom Waits. I’m not certain why Saunders’ first novel won that particular competition for my immediate attention but it did, and I assume most people would come to their own conclusions.

So, first hurdle to enjoyment – just what the heck is the title about? As I’m sure you’ll already have read or looked into had you any interest, and to put it as succinctly as I am able so to do*, Lincoln in this instance is William ‘Willie’ Wallace Lincoln, dead son of the famous and equally dead President, and a bardo is the Tibetan idea of any state of consciousness, and more specifically in this case, the place wherein souls reside after death and before rebirth. It sprang so I’m told from an instance in which celebrated short-story writer Saunders was informed, on passing the cemetery in which Lincoln the younger was interred, about the story of Lincoln the elder returning to the crypt to hold the corpse of Willie several times after his burial, a story corroborated by contemporary sources, of which many abound in this fuller fat offering. Some, I suspect, may be massaged in order to fit the chronology or bolster the story line, and some may well be downright fraudulent, but it doesn’t matter – in fact the contemporaneous sections can be safely ignored without harming the narrative flow (in my opinion their removal would have significantly improved matters). They do, however, have use in showing how unreliable an interested observer can be, given the phases of the moon, the weather, even the food at the table of the state feast during which poor Willie lies febrile and terminal upstairs, is reported contrastingly across the many accounts.

Nevertheless, grief is at the heart of this novel wherein poor Willie, from his vantage point in the nether-world, is so moved by his fathers tears at his coffin-side that he decides to forgo nirvana and hang around so as to be present when his father comes back for him, something Honest Abe promises without thought as to the practicalities thereof. Unfortunately, this causes some unfortunate side-effects, in so far as the bardo decides he must become ossified as a result, and reaches out with calcified tendrils attempting to weld him in place permanently. To his rescue come an unlikely triumvirate of trapped souls – a young gay man who killed himself, an elderly vicar/priest, and a printer who is hit on the head and dies before consummating his marriage to a much younger woman. They are three of a broad cast of spirits tormented in death by the decisions they made in life, and whose commentaries on their afterlife form the majority of the storytelling and narrative framework.

For something that came to life from the passing of a young child through typhoid, there is a zany slapstick quality to the novel, or perhaps a playfulness, which isn’t overwhelmed by the tearful passages but also doesn’t take away from the heartfelt sorrow that Saunders taps and brings fully to the fore. It’s a wild ride, and I look forward to the Nick Offerman-optioned film version if and when it ever arises. A worthy winner of prizes and a good read, I do wonder however if as an experiment in story-telling it might fall foul of repetitiveness, of contradiction, and of the variety of voices all clamouring for attention. I for one enjoy this sort of thing as you may already have realized, but does your average Richard & Judy reader feel the same?

Well, he’s sold a bucketful so who chuffing cares?

*Sorry

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