Haunting voices from the dead
LINCOLN IN THE BARDO by George Saunders (Bloomsbury £18.99)
AS THE American Civil War reaches a turning point in February 1862, President Lincoln’s 11-year-old son, Willie, dies of typhoid.
Interred in a Washington cemetery, he is visited by his grief-wracked father who cradles the small, decaying body, thereby trapping the child’s spirit in the Bardo, a spiritual transitional point between life and death.
From the surrounding coffins rises a cacophony of voices — pleading, bewildered, grieving, desperate not to be dead — whose stories unpeel the harsh, sometimes shocking American experience. Gradually, their message coheres: Willie’s spirit must move on.
This is an extraordinary novel: structurally inventive, impregnated with bitter grief, the surreal and the macabre and, yet, imparting a joyous relish for life. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it’s impossible to ignore.
IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY by Sarah Dunant (Virago £16.99)
THE Borgias are a byword for the history of the Renaissance. By 1502, Rodrigo rules as Pope in Rome. Observed and documented by Florentine emissary Niccolo Machiavelli, the brilliant, feral and onetime cardinal Cesare, son of the Pope, heads up an army to ensure Borgia dominance.
His 22-year-old sister Lucrezia is dispatched by their father to Ferrara to make a third advantageous marriage.
Dunant’s previous novel, Blood And Beauty, traced the rise of this attractive, ruthless and politically adept trio.
This dramatises their progress through the fastmoving and often violent political and cultural landscape of their heyday — just before Fortune’s wheel turns.
An intimate knowledge of Renaissance history powers a story crackling with energy.
THE WITCHFINDER’S SISTER by Beth Underdown (Viking £14.99)
‘HISTORY can tell us what happened but not what it was like’, reflects Alice, sister of Matthew Hopkins, the notorious Witchfinder General.
This distinction is crucial to her analysis of her younger brother’s transformation into the infamous persecutor of more than 100 women in Essex from 1644-46.
Recently widowed and pregnant, Alice has returned to live under her brother’s roof only to find he is engaged on this sinister and obsessive mission.
She is an intelligent observer, but she struggles to make sense of what drives him. Is his nature inherently evil? If so, is hers? In this confused state, she discovers a secret. Plot and prose flow confidently and, if Alice comes across occasionally as too knowing, she is complex and believable. An assured and accomplished debut.