
Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel

He was an open book. An opening book. That had just been opened up somewhat wider. By sorrow. And—by us. By all of us, black and white, who had so recently mass-inhabited him.
George Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
I love the slow exposition of Lincoln throughout this book - how the ghosts influence him as a result of his son's passing. It's a truly poetic thought.
At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end.
George Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
Strange, isn’t it? To have dedicated one’s life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one’s life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one’s labors utterly forgotten?
George Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
We were that way, at that time, and had been led to that place, not by any innate evil in ourselves, but by the state of our cognition and our experience up until that moment.
George Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
inclined. These were Abernathy, Seville, and Kord, all of whom
George Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
We were as we were! the bass lisper barked. How could we have been otherwise? Or, being that way, have done otherwise? We were that way, at that time, and had been led to that place, not by any innate evil in ourselves, but by the state of our cognition and our experience up until that moment.
George Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
The terror and consternation of the Presidential couple may be imagined by anyone who has ever loved a child, and suffered that dread intimation common to all parents, that Fate may not hold that life in as high a regard, and may dispose of it at will.
George Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
Strange, isn’t it? To have dedicated one’s life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one’s life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one’s labors utterly forgotten?
George Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
Death doesn't care and there's a steady stream of wasted life recounted in this book.
And proceeded past Trevor Williams, former hunter, seated before the tremendous heap of all the animals he had dispatched in his time: hundreds of deer, thirty-two black bear, three bear cubs, innumerable coons, lynx, foxes, mink, chipmunks, wild turkeys, woodchucks, and cougars; scores of mice and rats, a positive tumble of snakes, hundreds of
... See moreGeorge Saunders • Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
Reading this seemed to be the key to understanding why so many remained after death and why so many were eventually unburdened.