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Lincoln in the Bardo cover art

Lincoln in the Bardo

By: George Saunders
Narrated by: Nick Offerman,David Sedaris,George Saunders,Carrie Brownstein,Miranda  July,Lena Dunham,full cast
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Summary

Winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize

In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other, for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. God has called him home. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic historical framework into a thrilling supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo, a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

The 166-person full cast features award-winning actors and musicians, as well as a number of Saunders' family, friends, and members of his publishing team, including, in order of their appearance:

Nick Offerman as HANS VOLLMAN
David Sedaris as ROGER BEVINS III
Carrie Brownstein as ISABELLE PERKINS
George Saunders as THE REVEREND EVERLY THOMAS
Miranda July as MRS. ELIZABETH CRAWFORD
Lena Dunham as ELISE TRAYNOR
Ben Stiller as JACK MANDERS vJulianne Moore as JANE ELLIS
Susan Sarandon as MRS. ABIGAIL BLASS
Bradley Whitford as LT. CECIL STONE
Bill Hader as EDDIE BARON
Megan Mullally as BETSY BARON
Rainn Wilson as PERCIVAL “DASH” COLLIER
Jeff Tweedy as CAPTAIN WILLIAM PRINCE
Kat Dennings as MISS TAMARA DOOLITTLE
Jeffrey Tambor as PROFESSOR EDMUND BLOOMER
Mike O’Brien as LAWRENCE T. DECROIX
Keegan-Michael Key as ELSON FARWELL
Don Cheadle as THOMAS HAVENS
and Patrick Wilson as STANLEY “PERFESSER” LIPPERT
with Kirby Heyborne as WILLIE LINCOLN,
Mary Karr as MRS. ROSE MILLAND,
and Cassandra Campbell as Your Narrator.

©2017 George Saunders (P)2017 Audible, Ltd

What listeners say about Lincoln in the Bardo

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  • 27-07-17

Complete gibberish as far as I can tell

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

No idea

What will your next listen be?

Julian Barnes

Would you listen to another book narrated by the narrators?

Some of the narration is great - but I have no idea what they were narrating

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Mystification. I started it again twice thinking I might not have been concentrating whilst I was gardening or driving - but once they got past Willie's death it just gets sillier and sillier

Any additional comments?

I listen to and read a lot of "literary" fiction - but this is just a waste of time or too experimental for my brain

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51 people found this helpful

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Emperors new clothes

I think this may be a book everybody raves about because somebody clever wrote it and the critics say it's great. It's not great. It's boring and pseudo-intellectual. Like a spoof of a really clever book. Maybe you have to be American to get it. Can I have my money back please? I feel like I was conned by all the rave reviews.

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50 people found this helpful

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  • 13-07-17

Mistake

I liked the first part of the first chapter. After that I found the constant references totally stopped any kind of flow. This is not my kind of book and I returned it having failed to be pulled in.

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47 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Don’t buy on audible

This book does not work as an audio book. This is because there are chapters of extracts of newspapers and something called op.sit. that just serves to make the whole thing fragmented and very difficult to follow. I’m sure it makes sense in the written word though.

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25 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Confusing, disappointing, over-hyped

This has to be one of the most over-hyped books I have ever read or listened to. It has had rave reviews and has been shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize for fiction but I have to say that I really don't understand why.

It is rambling, confusing, depressing, lacks cohesion and, for a prose work, it is full of quotes and end notes from works of non-fiction. To me, this just made the whole thing a complete mess and very difficult to concentrate upon. Additionally, the huge number of characters (and therefore voices) used in the performance made this narrative really difficult to keep track of. I lost interest after the first half and gave up on it.

Perhaps it would be better to read a hard copy, to help make sense of it all. But if you decide to do that, allow plenty of time. This is a tale that you really need to concentrate hard on and it is certainly not an uplifting story.

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24 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Epic contemporary Shakespearean tragedy

George Saunder's epic historical and existential tragedy seems to resonate on many levels with a variety of readers. Taking the real life account of the death of Abraham Lincoln's son, exploring his grief and creating a magical realistic theatrical piece is a true wonder.

It's a listening experience for all the senses, with the beautiful music and sounds of the Civil War, as well as a host of well known voices - it's haunting in many aspects. The language is rich and variable mixing Shakespearean dialogue with modern slang.

Where it falls short are the constant breaks in the novel through footnotes describing the actual factual account of that time. It is jarring and ruins the experience - it should be left to the end and is only valid when reading. In this case Saunders sounds timid, having to constantly back up his claims. It would have been five stars, but it happened too often.

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19 people found this helpful

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Incomprehensible Garbage

What disappointed you about Lincoln in the Bardo?

Everything.

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

Like an am-dram production by moderately talented students with no director to marshall them: the numerous voices, footnotes and diversions serve only to produce a story which is utterly incomprehensible and completely incoherent. This is the worst audio book I've ever heard.

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16 people found this helpful

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Not for me

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

I'm not sure why this has received rave reviews - I can only imagine it works better in printed format than audio book. I'm sure its all very clever but it just didn't work for me.

What was most disappointing about George Saunders’s story?

I listen to audio books whilst driving and I found this to be tedious and irritating in equal measures, to the point where I had to pull over to switch off.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

There were so many narrators, many sounding similar and so very many characters . I could not tell you what was going on or who anyone was. Perhaps an American audience would appreciate the characters more, if they are more well known there.

Any additional comments?

I had to give up on it all together around half way through.

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13 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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I really don't get the point of this book

I found this book disjointed and pointless. I forced myself to finish it, not sure why as it felt like torture.

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12 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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What an extraordinary ride

A strange, beautiful, funny, moving gem of a novel. It is not a linear narrative but a watercolour painting of voices, snatches of fragmented lives and deaths and a truly original contemplation of what we have that might be eternal. This is not an easy listen or read and might not be for everyone, but I loved it.

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10 people found this helpful