Waiting for the tide to flow. Remember that old Jimmy Cliff song?
Even though I feel a tad superfluous writing a review of Lincoln in the Bardo, a book that’s already been widely praised, this is my blog and I get to write what I like.
It’s not really surprising that I loved the novel since I find myself consistently amazed by George Saunder’s fiction, as well as his writing on writing. Hard to think of anyone else I can say that about. Oh, maybe Virginia Woolf and Ursula K. Le Guin. If you haven’t read some of his essays on being a writer, go forth and find them.
I’d been saving the book for a vacation treat and was not disappointed. Frankly, I was awed by what he did with language and the voices of his characters. To evoke 19th-century diction and inject poetic, coined language like hammer blows of Anglo-Saxon is no mean feat. (Reminded me a little of Alan Garner (Strandloper) and Russell Hoban (Riddley Walker) and their attempts to push us out of our comfort zone in English.
The book is a playful, funny, frightening lucubration on death. I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead a couple of times over the years and don’t necessarily remember details, except the parts that were eerily similar to the afterlife judging depicted in Egyptian tombs. I do remember that once you’re in a bad place in your mind it’s hard to get out, your mind generating the horrible things you encounter. The “monstrous” elements of the hell realms were frightening, but there was the subtext that maybe they’d been created by the observer.
I did like the echoes in the story of the Minister, both with the Book of the dead, and with other Tibetan stories about those who “die” and are sent back to tell what they’ve seen (in an effort to get their listeners to worry enough about the Bardo to straighten up and fly right).
I can’t say more about my favorite bits without giving things away. The ending was deeply satisfying and left one grateful for the journey.
A hopeful, warm book, that constantly surprised. It reminds us our mortality is a fundamental reason to be kind.