recent reading: Lincoln in the Bardo
Jul. 17th, 2023 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesse I picked a copy of this book up from a Little Free Library while on a walk with baby A, so that was a lovely start. I ripped through 3/4 of the book in a day, finished the rest the day after.
The interpolated texts, some invented, some not, give the work a delightful variance in perspective, showing that truth is never singular, in reality. The contrasting voices impel the story forward, giving character revelations directly, rather than through the vehicle of plot. That part, I very much liked.
The overarching matters of death/eschatology on the one hand and politics/the US Civil War on the other? Both ended up falling unsuccessfully for me, in the end. I was engaged, I was interested, but the bolt didn't slide home for me. The last fifty pages bored and irked me, wrapping things up neatly in ways that did not satisfy.
I was dissatisfied when the depiction of the afterlife started to foreclose into something monotonal, & also quite Christian. The ongoing "rapture" sequence when one after another of the ghost characters achieves passage into the next life went well past sentimental and into wearing. Yeah, yeah, we get it. And so repetitive, and so much the same for all, regardless of the earlier shown rich differences.
And then there's the handling of the War Between the States. The impact of grief was strong, but the reparative gestures of the text toward Black characters and political/personal goals felt weaker. Too much concern over the slain white boys, and not enough spared for the tortured Black children enslaved in the Confederacy. Individual depictions of racism and racialized suffering, but not a systemic account. For a book about grief and the Presidency, the lack of systemic anti-racist perspective seemed like a grave defect. In combination with the treacly "rapture," left me with a rather unpleasant aftertaste, unwanted after a more enjoyable reading experience earlier in the work.
I found myself wishing that the book had landed as solidly as The Screwtape Letters, with the sudden reversal of fortunes and the elegantly-drawn curtain of a briefer ending.
But I did certainly shed tears over Saunders' depiction of Lincoln-the-grieving father, and had fun with the lexicology/spelling play in the polyvocal sections of the text!
The interpolated texts, some invented, some not, give the work a delightful variance in perspective, showing that truth is never singular, in reality. The contrasting voices impel the story forward, giving character revelations directly, rather than through the vehicle of plot. That part, I very much liked.
The overarching matters of death/eschatology on the one hand and politics/the US Civil War on the other? Both ended up falling unsuccessfully for me, in the end. I was engaged, I was interested, but the bolt didn't slide home for me. The last fifty pages bored and irked me, wrapping things up neatly in ways that did not satisfy.
I was dissatisfied when the depiction of the afterlife started to foreclose into something monotonal, & also quite Christian. The ongoing "rapture" sequence when one after another of the ghost characters achieves passage into the next life went well past sentimental and into wearing. Yeah, yeah, we get it. And so repetitive, and so much the same for all, regardless of the earlier shown rich differences.
And then there's the handling of the War Between the States. The impact of grief was strong, but the reparative gestures of the text toward Black characters and political/personal goals felt weaker. Too much concern over the slain white boys, and not enough spared for the tortured Black children enslaved in the Confederacy. Individual depictions of racism and racialized suffering, but not a systemic account. For a book about grief and the Presidency, the lack of systemic anti-racist perspective seemed like a grave defect. In combination with the treacly "rapture," left me with a rather unpleasant aftertaste, unwanted after a more enjoyable reading experience earlier in the work.
I found myself wishing that the book had landed as solidly as The Screwtape Letters, with the sudden reversal of fortunes and the elegantly-drawn curtain of a briefer ending.
But I did certainly shed tears over Saunders' depiction of Lincoln-the-grieving father, and had fun with the lexicology/spelling play in the polyvocal sections of the text!
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