![]() Soon stone tendrils are seeking to encase the boy and keep him trapped between forever. Children do not hang about for long before moving on, and there are dire consequences for resisting. When Willie Lincoln appears amongst them, they are surprised that he lingers. These ghosts, disfigured by desires they had but failed to act on when they were alive, appear to think they are not dead but residing in a hospital yard to recuperate in ‘sick boxes’. Unfolding over a single night, this is a story about the ‘in-between’, sometimes referred to by Tibetans as The Bardo, the place between heaven and earth populated by ghosts who have not yet moved on spiritually. The attributions can be distracting (especially on the ebook version) but the mind soon adjusts to the play like structure of the book and it is well worth perseverance. It has an unusual format in that historic material, such as parts of letters and entries in official documents, is included as part of the narrative and combined with the fictional story. LINCOLN IN THE BARDO is a novel with a huge cast of over 160 characters. Saunders has said he was scared to write this story, he didn’t think he could do it. Did he know that on the day Abraham Lincoln buried his son Willie, he returned to the crypt in Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown to hold his son once more? This nugget of information stayed with Saunders and spurred him to conduct extensive research on Lincoln and the Civil War. ![]() It was a conversation George Saunders had with his wife’s cousin that inspired the award winning novel LINCOLN IN THE BARDO. ![]()
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