George Saunders, already revered as perhaps the finest short story writer of his generation, delivered his debut novel in 2017 and won the Man Booker Prize with it. Lincoln in the Bardo takes place over a single night in February 1862, when Abraham Lincoln visits the Georgetown cemetery where his eleven-year-old son Willie has just been buried. The novel unfolds through a chorus of ghostly voices, spirits trapped in the bardo (the Tibetan Buddhist transitional state between death and rebirth), who observe and eventually interact with the grieving president.
The form is unlike anything most readers have encountered. Voices overlap, historical accounts are quoted and contradicted, and the dead tell their stories in fragments that gradually coalesce into something profoundly moving. The reaction splits predictably: readers who embrace the experiment find it one of the most emotionally powerful novels they’ve ever read, while those who can’t connect with the form find it impenetrable.
A Chorus of the Dead That Somehow Lives
The polyphonic structure is the book’s most daring and most rewarding element. Dozens of spirits tell their stories, each with a distinct voice and a specific reason for refusing to move on. Hans Vollman, roger bevins iii, and the Reverend Everly Thomas emerge as the central trio, and Saunders gives each a personality so vivid that they become as real as any conventionally drawn character. The cumulative effect of these voices creates a portrait of human longing and denial that grows more powerful as the novel progresses.
Saunders’s prose, honed by decades of short fiction, is precise and surprising in every sentence. His ability to shift from comedy to devastating sadness within a single paragraph is unmatched, and the novel’s funniest moments, the ghosts’ euphemisms for their own deaths, their petty rivalries, their stubborn refusal to acknowledge their condition, serve the emotional architecture rather than undermining it.
The historical sections, composed entirely of quoted (and sometimes invented) accounts of Willie Lincoln’s illness, death, and funeral, create a kaleidoscopic view of a historical moment. These passages capture how any event looks different from every angle, and they give the novel an intellectual dimension that complements its emotional one.
Lincoln himself appears sparingly but with enormous impact. Saunders writes the president’s grief with restraint and dignity, letting the physical details, a father holding his dead son’s body, carry the emotional weight without editorializing. These scenes are among the most moving in recent fiction.
The Experimental Form as Barrier
The novel’s form is also its highest barrier to entry. The rapid alternation between voices, the lack of conventional narrative structure, and the disorienting early chapters send many readers searching for their footing. The first fifty pages require patience and trust that the novel will cohere, and not all readers are willing to extend that trust.
The sheer number of ghostly voices can feel overwhelming. While the central spirits are well-developed, some of the peripheral voices blur together, and the effect can feel like channel-surfing through a graveyard. Readers who need to track characters closely may find the multiplication of perspectives exhausting.
The historical quotation sections, while intellectually stimulating, interrupt the emotional momentum of the ghost narrative. Some readers find the alternation between the two modes jarring rather than enriching, particularly when a deeply emotional ghostly sequence is followed by a dry historical account.
The novel’s brevity, given its ambitions, means that some of its most interesting ideas are raised without being fully explored. The bardo concept, the nature of the afterlife, the relationship between historical fact and narrative truth: all of these are gestured toward rather than comprehensively addressed.
Grief Beyond the Grave
Lincoln in the Bardo is fundamentally a novel about what keeps us from letting go, whether of life, of loved ones, or of the stories we tell ourselves. The ghosts in the bardo are stuck because they refuse to accept their deaths, and their stories, individually and collectively, map the full range of human attachment and regret.
The convergence of the ghostly and presidential storylines in the novel’s climax is extraordinary. Without spoiling the specifics, Saunders brings his themes together in a sequence that is simultaneously surreal, funny, and truly transcendent. It’s the kind of ending that redefines what you thought the book was doing all along.
Should You Read Lincoln in the Bardo?
If you’re open to experimental fiction and value emotional payoff over conventional storytelling, this is a remarkable experience. Readers who love Saunders’s short fiction will find the same qualities amplified here. If you need clear narrative structure, a manageable cast of characters, or a novel that doesn’t require a significant upfront investment of patience, the form may be more obstacle than invitation. The audiobook, performed by a full cast of 166 voices, is frequently cited as an alternative that makes the structure more accessible.
The Verdict on Lincoln in the Bardo
Lincoln in the Bardo is a singular achievement in contemporary fiction, a novel that invents its own form and fills it with more humor, grief, and humanity than most conventional novels manage. Saunders proves that his mastery of voice and emotion scales from the short story to the novel without losing any of its power. The experimental structure will alienate some readers, and the early going demands patience. But for those who surrender to its strange rhythms, it offers an experience that is truly unlike anything else: a ghost story that makes you believe in the reality of its spirits and the weight of their unfinished lives.