His story is concerned generally with the early death of young Willie Lincoln, son of the Civil War President, but it is really the story of Everyman. Like the central character of the medieval play, who is suddenly faced with the character of death calling time on his life, Willie Lincoln too is not ready to leave his life behind. The collection of souls, or beings who the president’s young son meets on the other side, try to convince him that he should move on, but he delays. This is only one part of the problem, the other is how reluctant his father, President Lincoln, is to let him go.
The real genius of this story is how Saunders manages to dazzle us with many truths and realities of life, while presenting the story in a fantastical reality, which is, let’s face it, bizzare and unknowable. Yet, it is because the story is so surreal, that we can focus on the struggles of the characters, as they tell their stories and jostle for position in the cruel life that is the afterlife. In this way, the book reminded me of Samuel Beckett, with a multitude of Didi and Gogos, all waiting for something to happen. And like Beckett, Sauders’s novel feels very like a drama, consisting mostly of conversations, and monologues - it would not be out of place on the stage - although with a cast of thousands - the actors looking like extras straight from the set of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.
Towards the end of the book Roger Bevins III says:
‘None of it was real; nothing was real.
Everything was real. Inconceivably real, infinitely dear.’
This line, when all is said and done, is everything you need to know about ‘Lincoln and the Bardo’, and everything we need to know about life, if you think about it - and THAT is the power and magic of this book. It will make you want to hug your kids, hold your partner’s hand, and wake up in the morning and feel like you have a million more mornings to wake up to, and also like this is your very last day. The emotion is startling.
Emily Dickinson wrote feverishly during the American Civil War, especially during 1962-3, and so it is no wonder that her poems deal with death, when the war took so many. The character of Miss Isabelle Perkins, who writes letters to her brother about the dead souls that she sees wandering in the cemetery - ‘angels of various shapes and sizes’ - reminds me of Emily Dickinson. Like the poet, she is immobilised in her bedroom, and watches the world go by from her window. I like to think that Saunders was inspired by the reclusive poet, and endowed her with the ability to see those lingering in the Bardo, ‘comfortable having these Dead for company’. And by the book’s end, we feel the same way too.
If the zombie apocalypse is your thing, you won’t find it in ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’, but you will find a boy and man by the name of Lincoln, struggling to make sense of death in life, and life after death - just like the rest of us really.
