It is a weird book. Honestly, there is no other way to put it. When people first pick up Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders wrote back in 2017, they usually spend the first twenty pages wondering if they are reading a novel, a play, or a historical archive that’s been put through a paper shredder and glued back together by a madman. It is jarring. It is chaotic.
But it works.
George Saunders, a man mostly known for his razor-sharp short stories about the absurdities of American capitalism, decided to tackle the 16th President of the United States. He didn't write a standard biography. Instead, he dropped Abraham Lincoln into a graveyard full of foul-mouthed, confused, and stuck spirits.
The "Bardo" is a Tibetan Buddhist concept. It's a transitional state between death and rebirth. In this story, it's the Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown. The year is 1862. The Civil War is screaming in the background. Young Willie Lincoln has just died of typhoid fever.
What Actually Happens in the Bardo?
The plot is deceptively simple. Willie Lincoln dies. He is placed in a crypt. His father, the President, is so destroyed by grief that he returns to the cemetery to hold his son’s cold body. This is a real historical fact, by the way. Contemporary accounts from the 1860s mention Lincoln returning to the tomb to see Willie.
Saunders takes that one heartbreaking image and builds an entire supernatural ecosystem around it.
The "ghosts" in this book don't think they’re dead. They call their coffins "sick-boxes." They think they are just lingering because of some unfinished business or a physical ailment that will eventually pass. They are grotesque. One character, Hans Vollman, is perpetually naked with a massive, permanent erection because he died just before consummating his marriage to his young wife. Another, Roger Bevins III, has about a hundred eyes and hands because he committed suicide and now regrets missing out on the sensory beauty of the world.
They watch Lincoln. They see this "tall gentleman" cradling a "form" (the corpse). It shocks them. Most living people ignore the dead, but Lincoln’s touch provides a momentary bridge between the two worlds.
The Experimental Style: Genius or Gimmick?
You’ll notice immediately that the book is composed of snippets. Saunders uses real historical documents, letters, and memoirs mixed with fictionalized ones. Sometimes these accounts contradict each other. One source says the moon was full that night; another says it was a thin crescent.
Why do that?
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Because history is messy. Saunders is showing us that truth is often just a collection of biased perspectives.
Then you have the ghosts. Their dialogue is formatted like a script.
- "It was a most unpleasant sensation." -- Hans Vollman
- "Quite." -- Roger Bevins III
It’s fast. You can fly through 400 pages in two days because so much of it is white space. It feels like a cacophony of voices. It’s a literal ghost-choir. If you listen to the audiobook—which features 166 different narrators including Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, and Julianne Moore—the experience becomes even more visceral. It's basically a radio play on acid.
Why This Book Hit So Hard
At its core, Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders created is about the paradox of love.
Lincoln is losing his son while he is also losing the country. The Civil War is a meat grinder. He is sending thousands of other people's sons to their deaths while he mourns his own. The ghosts are stuck because they can't let go of their previous lives. They are clinging to their desires, their anger, and their "sick-boxes."
Saunders is asking a brutal question: How do we continue to love when we know that everything we love will eventually be taken away?
The ghosts see Lincoln’s grief and it starts to change them. They realize that they aren't "sick." They are gone. To move on, they have to stop "lingering." They have to enter the "matter-light," which is Saunders' term for the final transition into whatever comes next. It’s terrifying. It’s a loud, bone-shaking bang.
The Historical Reality of Willie Lincoln
We shouldn't forget that Willie was the favorite.
Robert Lincoln was aloof. Tad was chaotic. But Willie was like his father—intellectual, kind, and observant. When he died at age 11, the Lincolns were hosting a massive party at the White House. They could hear the music downstairs while their son was slipping away upstairs. The guilt must have been astronomical.
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Saunders captures the specific weight of that guilt. He doesn't treat Lincoln like a marble statue on a monument. He treats him like a broken father. The President is described as "stooped," "grey," and "hollow."
He is a man who is literally carrying the weight of the dead.
Common Misconceptions About the Novel
People often think this is a "Civil War book." It’s not.
If you're looking for battle maps and tactical analysis of Gettysburg, look elsewhere. The war is a shadow. It is the context for the grief, but the focus is internal.
Another misconception: it's a horror story. It isn't. Despite the ghosts and the cemetery setting, it’s not meant to scare you. It’s meant to make you weep. It’s a comedy of the macabre that turns into a profound meditation on empathy.
The Saunders Signature
If you’ve read CivilWarLand in Bad Decline or Tenth of December, you know George Saunders loves the underdog. He loves the loser. He loves the person who has been chewed up by a system they don't understand.
In this book, the "system" is death itself.
Even the vilest characters—the racists, the bitter soldiers, the elitists—are given a moment of humanity. Saunders forces us to inhabit their "carapaces." He makes us feel their lingering attachment to a world that has already forgotten them.
Actionable Takeaways for Readers and Writers
If you are planning to dive into this masterpiece, or if you've finished it and are wondering what to do with the emotional wreckage it left behind, consider these points.
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1. Don't fight the format. When you start, don't try to memorize who every ghost is. Just let the voices wash over you. You will eventually recognize the "rhythm" of characters like Vollman and Bevins. The historical snippets might feel like interruptions, but they provide the "gravity" that keeps the ghost story from floating away.
2. Explore the "Bardo" in your own life. We all have "lingering" issues. Saunders suggests that the things we refuse to let go of are the things that deform us. Whether it's a grudge, a lost love, or a version of ourselves that no longer exists, staying in the Bardo is a choice.
3. Study the "Empathy Bridge." For writers, this book is a masterclass in shifting perspectives. Saunders proves that you can jump between 50 different points of view if you have a strong central emotional hook (in this case, Lincoln’s grief).
4. Check out the Audiobook. Seriously. Even if you aren't an "audiobook person," this is the gold standard. Hearing the distinct voices makes the "script" format of the book much more intuitive.
5. Read "The Braindead Megaphone." To understand Saunders' philosophy better, look at his essays. He believes that fiction is a "black box" you enter as one person and leave as another. This novel is the ultimate version of that box.
Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders gave us isn't just a book about a president or a ghost story. It’s a reminder that we are all, in some way, just passing through. We are all "lingering" until we find the courage to let go.
To fully appreciate the historical context, researchers often point to Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk, which provides a deep dive into the President's lifelong struggle with clinical depression. Pairing that knowledge with Saunders’ fictionalized account makes the ending of the novel—where Lincoln must leave the cemetery to go lead a dying nation—all the more powerful. He leaves his son's body, but he carries the empathy he gained in the graveyard back to the Oval Office.
The next logical step for anyone moved by this story is to visit the real Oak Hill Cemetery in DC if possible. Standing near the Carroll family tomb—where Willie was briefly interred—gives you a chilling sense of how close the fiction is to the cold, hard earth. If you can't travel, spend some time with Saunders' 2021 book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. It explains his "toolbox" for how stories work, which will make you want to go back and reread the Bardo with a whole new set of eyes.
The book is a heavy lift, but the view from the top is worth the climb.
Key Historical Markers in the Novel
- February 1862: The month Willie Lincoln passed away.
- The Carroll Family Tomb: The actual location where Willie’s body was kept before being moved back to Illinois after his father's assassination.
- Elizabeth Keckley: The former slave and seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln who appears in the book (and wrote a real, fascinating memoir about her time in the White House).
By blending these fragments of reality with the surreal landscape of the afterlife, Saunders creates something that feels more "true" than a standard history book ever could. It’s a visceral, messy, beautiful exploration of what it means to be human—both in life and in whatever comes after.