Lincoln In The Bardo

It’s 1862 at a Washington DC cemetery where Abraham Lincoln visits his recently interred son in a crypt. Saunders, lauded for his quirky short stories, has written an unusual first novel. The story covers one night and is told entirely in block quotes, mostly from the graveyard’s restless spirits, who now include the 11-year-old boy, all caught in the Bardo, a sort of Buddhist limbo between death and whatever is next.

As the story canters along, the voices are variously gossipy, profane, profound or comic, a busy Greek chorus that ranges over death, slavery, sex, war, love, endless rue and the awful grief a child’s death arouses. The writing constantly surprises. Jeffery Burke