How the Spirits Tell Their Stories: A Review of Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Random House, 2017
343 pages, $17.00

George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo is the 2017 Man Booker prize–winning work of fiction, inspired by the true story of a president’s display of sorrow. The most salient aspect of the book is the cacophonous chorus of narrators whose words build the bardo—in Tibetan Buddhism, the space between this life and the next. However, the most significant aspect of the book is the lesson that the lies we tell ourselves imprison us in our falsehoods and distort our true nature.

On a cold February night in 1862, guests arriving at a formal White House reception reported that the moon shone golden. Or perhaps it was green. Some remembered it being yellow-red, while others claimed the night was moonless with foreboding, heavy clouds. As the revelers joined the festivities, praising the extravagant food and elegant décor, the president’s son, Willie Lincoln, lay dying of an illness upstairs.

Days later a funeral procession marched Willie’s lifeless body to a tomb. President Lincoln knew that his son’s soul no longer animated the little body, yet contemporaneous accounts tell of the president returning to the crypt at night. Returning to the body. Returning to cradle in his arms what once was his living, breathing son.

At this liminal moment, Saunders explores what it means for a father to see a corpse and, against all previously nurtured instincts, no longer see the totality of his son, body and soul. The elder Lincoln argues with himself,

So why grieve? The worst of it, for him, is over.
Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussing and worry and doing.

The heartache of letting go is a common theme; one that literature, music, and all other manner of art regularly examines. But here, Saunders flips the scene upside down, or perhaps soul-side out. At the very same moment that Abraham Lincoln struggles to navigate the transition between being the father of a living Willie and becoming the father of a deceased Willie, Saunders asks us to consider that Willie might be struggling with the same transition.
The deceased boy finds himself in the bardo, sitting upon his burial tomb, listening to other departed (or partially departed) souls tell their stories. The act of telling, of holding on, and of remembering, reliving, and retaining is the act that locks the spirits in this less-than-catechistically-correct purgatory. Like the guests describing the moon on that February night, reality is subject to personal perception. The souls here in the bardo do not believe they are dead and work hard to twist their words to fit their version of reality. Coffins, or sick-boxes. Lives concluded, or lives continued. Memories of past actions and consequences, or memories of injustices waiting to be rectified. Spiritual transitions built on a single, faith-filled step into the unknown, or spiritual transitions full of fearsome demons.

How the spirits tell their stories—to themselves as much as to others—determines not only how long they persist in the bardo, but also how they appear. As Willie Lincoln notes about a man still eager to see and smell and touch the world he departed decades ago, “In telling his story he had grown so many extra eyes and noses and hands that his body all but vanished.” Each character creates his or her own grotesque appearance. In the constant retelling of their stories, the characters not only bind themselves to their old lives, they change who they are meant to be. No longer made in the image of God, they become made in the image of their own, obsessive stories. They become their own creations. They become their own creators.

Having established this world, Saunders takes us on a journey where a trio of spirits make it their mission to help Willie and President Lincoln accept the boy’s transition. In a case of “physician, heal thyself,” the spirits struggle to understand that the path that Willie must travel down is also the path they must follow.

The book’s atmosphere is thoroughly human: touching in one moment, profane in the next. Voices interrupt, argue, and talk over one another. Characters lie, act willfully blind, and often refuse to fit into convenient “good” or “bad” categories. Saunders convinces us that these characters have sat in the graveyard, repeating their stories for years, decades, perhaps centuries, and we, the readers, are a fresh set of ears. They fill us with their rants and their worries, their pains and their lies, their dreams and their desires. But along with the chaos is the promise of redemption—the promise that through their words, we will discover their hearts. Once hearts are laid bare, this community of grotesque characters will come together to help a father say goodbye and a son accept death, but can they help themselves in the process?

None of it was real; nothing was real.
Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear.
These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth.
And now we must lose them.

Not all choose to abandon their distorted worlds, but those that willingly relinquish their roles as flawed creators will reclaim the beauty and dignity of being beloved creations once again.

In the first nine pages of Lincoln in the Bardo, we hear from five different perspectives—deceased storytellers and historical eyewitnesses alike. The next two pages add three additional voices, and the routine continues. The format is unique and requires the reader to trust that Saunders will bring the prominent voices to the front and allow the peripheral voices to enrich the world of the bardo. This full chorus of perspectives brought the book much deserved attention but will also turn some readers away. In the end, the book will not be remembered for effectively employing some radical storytelling gimmick but will be remembered for its ability to make the reader cheer on the distorted, flawed characters. In the bardo, readers will discover reflections of their own flaws in the grotesques but will also come away knowing true love lets go, embraces truth, and allows us to escape our self- constructed prisons.