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Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

by
March 2017, no. 389

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Bloomsbury $29.99 pb, 368 pp, 9781408871751

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

by
March 2017, no. 389

From the outside, America seems defined by its brutal polarities – political, racial, moral, economic, geographic. The Disunited States of America. From the inside, the picture is more complex; American life is not lived at these extremes, but in the murky, transitional spaces between them. George Saunders’s much-anticipated novel Lincoln in the Bardo is set in another murky, transitional space – between life and death – a space that proves a powerful allegory for the desires and sorrows of a nation conceived in liberty, but forged in blood.

Beejay Silcox reviews 'Lincoln in the Bardo' by George Saunders

Lincoln in the Bardo

by George Saunders

Bloomsbury $29.99 pb, 368 pp, 9781408871751

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Comment (1)

  • I find Beejay Silcox’s writing refreshingly honest and very poignant, and look forward in anticipation to each of her articles and reviews. Her ‘Letter from America’ (ABR, September 2016) was outstanding and very prophetic. As with all literary critics getting the right flavour in a response to a writer’s efforts is not an easy task, but the ease with which she dissects a text and provides an analysis of its content and context is exemplary. Accordingly I look forward to more of her efforts.
    Posted by Dr. Neil MacNeil
    25 March 2017