---
product_id: 39037767
title: "Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, February 14, 2017"
brand: "george saunders"
price: "VT4028"
currency: VUV
in_stock: false
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.vu/products/39037767-lincoln-in-the-bardo-a-novel-hardcover-deckle-edge-february
store_origin: VU
region: Vanuatu
---

# Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, February 14, 2017

**Brand:** george saunders
**Price:** VT4028
**Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, February 14, 2017 by george saunders
- **How much does it cost?** VT4028 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Currently out of stock
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.vu](https://www.desertcart.vu/products/39037767-lincoln-in-the-bardo-a-novel-hardcover-deckle-edge-february)

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- george saunders enthusiasts

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## Description

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## Images

![Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, February 14, 2017 - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91iYVLpHuAL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Death, LIfe, Grief, and Resolve
  

*by D***S on Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2017*

I have to say upfront that I’ve been a Saunders fan since CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, so I jumped to order this book as soon as I saw it.  It’s his first novel, and it’s very Saunders-like — meaning that it’s not like anything he’s done before, because that’s how he does things.It’s written  in an unusual  voice, which I found a little disorienting and difficult to follow at first.  But once you get it, it flows.  The story is told by numerous characters and narrators, both contemporaneous characters and historical sources and commentators looking back on the events from the near present.  It feels like a play, with characters speaking in turn as much to the audience as to each other.The central event is the death of Abraham Lincoln’s son, Willie.  Willie dies at the end of his father’s first year in office, as the Civil War, and the horrors of the war, ramp up.  President Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, were devastated by their son’s death, and haunted by guilt that they hadn’t done enough to prevent it as Willie’s sickness worsened.Willie has arrived in a kind of limbo — the bardo — after his death.  This limbo is populated by a whole array of characters, many of whom have been there for decades, never able to accept that they have died.  For many, some issue, grievance, or unfinished business in general prevents them from letting go of their lives.In Willie’s case, the unwillingness to let go comes from both sides.  His father cannot let go of Willie, visiting and staying by his resting place, even taking him from the crypt back into his arms.  And Willie is simply taken before he is ready, not letting go of his father, longing to have his father feel his touch.Hans Vollman and Roger Bevins III are seemingly permanent residents of the bardo.  They take a special interest in Willie. Normally children as young as Willie don’t stay in the bardo very long, but Willie is a special case.  Lincoln provides the view of Willie from life, the child stolen away too early and maybe avoidably.  Vollman and Bevins provide the view from the other side, where Willie is not in heaven but lost in this limbo, from which he can’t touch the living world or be touched by the father he left behind.Vollman and Bevins try to help Willie, although the help he really needs, letting go of life, is something they can’t even do for themselves.  At the same time, they try to help the president, bringing him together with his son so that each can accept Willie’s death, so that Willie can let go of life and Lincoln can let go of death.All of this happens in parallel with the events of the Civil War, a virtual flood of death itself.  Willie’s death and Lincoln’s reaction to it come at the same time that so many are grieving the deaths of so many, under the orders of Lincoln himself.  The preident feels the shock of a son’s death while the war’s losses are shocking the mothers and fathers of sons fighting the war, the war that Lincoln feels responsibility for and that he and his critics are seeing go horribly wrong at this stage.The images of Lincoln that Saunders presents, overcome and paralyzed by grief, paint a picture of a depressed president being tested.  He must have been tempted to try to end the war and the deaths that are doing to countless parents what Willie’s death is doing to him.Willie and all the dead in the bardo teach Lincoln about the commonality of suffering and the reality of death.  When he does let go of Willie, he lets go of grief’s paralysis, for himself and his presidency.  He turns a corner away from grief and sorrow and toward resolve.The dead learn a similar resolve.  Willie breaks the taboo of the bardo when he says, “Everyone, we are dead!”One measure of a book is its emotional effect.  I think this is an oddly inspiring book.  “Oddly” because so much of it is about death.  But it’s also about an attitude — moving forward and not clinging to things that are over and done with.  That goes not only for death but for all the changes we go through within life.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Lincoln in the Bardo - amazing, but not without flaws.
  

*by A***. on Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2017*

George Saunders’ new novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo” is a unique work of historical fiction. It uses a series of accounts, some real, some fictional, all revolving around once singular, true occurrence. While the staccato placement of accounts may have felt sort of jarring on the page it served its particular purpose, in some areas, beautifully. Saunders’ use of contrasting accounts is particularly interesting. Two consecutive accounts on one page describe the moon as incredibly clear, and completely obfuscated. I can’t quite place his intention surrounding those conflicts (but then, unlike George Saunders, I don’t have a genius grand) but it seriously underscores the human capacity for error which was so prominently displayed in the era of the Civil War.George Saunders, ever a fan of the strange, hilarious, and terrifying, managed to create an equivalent of purgatory both calm and incredibly frightening; a “bardo” or inbetween state that its inhabitants are consciously unaware of. To admit one’s own death is embrace it, and to disappear forever. Rather than admit their deaths, the inhabitants of the cemetery in which most of the book’s occurrences unfold emerge from their “sick boxes” each evening, wandering aimlessly within the cemetery grounds, unable to effect any change in the outside world, and waiting endlessly for family that never comes.In the world of the living, meanwhile, Lincoln had spent weeks believing his son was going to recover, when in fact, he only got weaker. While his son suffered through his final hours, Lincoln held a feast. Some of the accounts featured in the book judge Lincoln quite harshly for this, but can it really be blamed? He was, after all, the president, and was expected to hold dinners at the white house, although the merriment may well have been in excess. His son had been ill for weeks, how was he to know this was poor Willie’s final day?All of these accounts of his faults, and the imagined thoughts in his head serve one, perfectly executed purpose - to paint Abraham Lincoln as human. He was imperfect. In his early days his handling of the Civil War was clumsy and purposeless. He held a loud, raucous party while his boy suffered. But he loved his son. No account Saunders created could demonstrate that more than the truth of history - the first night Willie Lincoln was interred, Abraham Lincoln was absent from the Whitehouse. The president was seen by the gatekeeper of the cemetery, entering late in the evening, and not leaving until morning.This emotional momentum is echoed by the voices of the chorus of ghosts present in the cemetery, who come to terms with their own death largely by witnessing the purity of sorrow felt by Lincoln, but they do get tedious. The purposeful repetition was overused quite often throughout the novel, and I think a more judicious editor would have done the book some good. Additionally, I think that the utter lack of standard prose detracts from George Saunders's greatest asset - his voice. His capacity to display people at their barest, simplest, most childlike emotional state was largely absent from the novel, replaced by an editorial echo of the loss felt by the nation during the civil war.Either way, Saunders presents an incredibly introspective story - one where missed opportunity, loss, and a deep sense of mourning overpower any of the books faults.Personal notes -I would rank George Saunders amongst the greatest fiction writers who have ever lived, and as perhaps the greatest ever American fiction writer (high praise considering there is a Kurt Vonnegut quote eternally present on my chest.) His transition from the short story to the novel underscores a new potential for him to exercise his voice. One I hope he will make ample use of.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
    Hipnotizante
  
  

*by G***O on Reviewed in Brazil on May 16, 2022*

Com estrutura diferente de qualquer outro romance e narrado por vozes diversas, essa é uma história profundamente tocante (e por vezes muito divertida) sobre amor e perda, sobre aceitação da própria finitude e da finitude de quem amamos. Uma leitura deliciosa e impactante.

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*Product available on Desertcart Vanuatu*
*Store origin: VU*
*Last updated: 2026-02-26*