Reviews

• 沼地が目の前に広がり、孤独な少女が見つける愛と見守る少年の優しさがしみ込んできます。

  ずっとベストセラーだけあって、本当に美しく、切ない物語です。沼地のボート、小さな草むらから、向こう側の流れに浮かぶ彼のボートまで、目に浮かぶ。映画化になるか楽しみです。

• ２０１７年ブッカー賞受賞作は、極めて実験的な幽霊の「ドタバタ人情劇」

  題名にあるBardo（バルド）とは、チベット密教の用語で、死後から再生までの中間状態である「中有」または「中陰」のことだ。この小説では、チベットの死者の書「バルド・トドゥル」に厳密に従ったものではなく、死んだ後に成仏できずにいる状態のようだ。 舞台は、南北戦争勃発から約１年後のジョージタウンにあるオークヒル墓地だ。 ここには、バルドの次のステージに移ることができない幽霊たちが住んでいる。 彼らは自分たちが死んだことを認めておらず、棺桶のことを「Sick Box（病気療養の箱）」と呼び、現状が改善すれば元の場所に戻ることができると思っている。「死」について語るのはご法度であり、それは無言の約束事になっている。 それぞれ理由は異なるが、幽霊たちがバルドにとどまっているのは、現世に未練を残しているからだ。あるいは、この後に続く最後の審判を恐れている。 どちらつかずの状態に慣れている幽霊たちの間に、あるとき新入りが加わった。それは、腸チフスで死んだ、リンカーン大統領の１１歳の息子ウイリアムだった。ウイリアムの死に打ちひしがれるリンカーンは、ひとりで墓場を訪れて嘆いた。そして、ウイリアムはバルドにとどまって父の次の訪問を待つようになる。 常連の幽霊たちは、少年のことが気になり、助けてやらねばならないと考える。知恵を合わせ、手を尽くすが、実際に彼らを助けたのは、最終的にはウイリアムのほうだった……。 Lincoln In The Bardoは、短編集『Tenth of December』で2013年の全米図書賞を受賞したGeorge Saundersにとって初めての小説だ。そして、風変わりな小説の中でも飛び抜けて風変わりだ。 文芸小説を読み慣れているネイティブの読者ですら、「あまりにも突拍子がなくて、途中で放棄した」と告白するほどだ。 最初は、２人の幽霊の会話で始まる。 ひとりは、若い妻に心の準備ができるまで根気よく待っていたのに、いざという時に落下した天井の梁で死んだ中年の男だ。その無念のせいか、幽霊になっても性器が勃起したままになっている。 もうひとりは、恋人につれなくされて自殺したものの、途中で死にたくなくなったゲイの若者だ。彼が興奮すると、生きて感じることへの切望か、数多くの目や鼻、手が現れる。 そんな奇妙な幽霊たちを、新入りのウイリアム・リンカーンは静かに観察する。 もうひとりの主要人物（幽霊）は、ここで唯一自分が死んでいることを知っている牧師だ。怯えた顔をして髪が逆だっている理由は後でわかる。 これら３人の常連たちは、頑固に父を待つウイリアムのことを心配し、なんとか助けてやろうとする。 ウイリアムが亡くなったときの経緯やその後のリンカーン大統領の様子、そして歴史的背景は、歴史に残っている書物の引用で進む。 たとえば、奴隷として生まれ、その後リンカーン大統領夫人と懇意になったドレスメーカーのElizabeth Keckleyの『Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House』という回想録からの引用だ。 だが、ここがGeorge Saundersのトリッキーなところだが、この多くの引用の中に、彼の創作が混じっている。たとえば、Margaret Garrettの『All This Did I See: Memories of a Terrible Time』については、どう探しても見つからないので、Saundersの創作だと思える。 幽霊があまりの悔しさに怒ってウンチをしたのがそのまま乾燥して残っているとか、勃起した性器の話がしつこいほど繰り返されるところとか、「幼稚園の男子のジョークか、オヤジギャグか？」とツッコミたくなった。３人の主要幽霊＋ウイリアム以外にも、犯罪者からレイプ犠牲者まで４０もの多様な脇役が登場し、笑いあり涙ありの「ドタバタ人情劇」の様相になる。 これがブッカー賞を受賞した文芸だというのは、かえって味わい深い。

• すごく面白かった

  An incredible work. The style of writing, seemingly as collections of quotes one after another, took a bit to get used to, but once I understood that and got used to the rhythm of it, it ceased to be a distraction. In fact, it rather helped pull me into that world, the bardo. It was a heartbreaking book - the heartbreak of a parent losing a young child, of a young child separated from his parents too early - but also a hilarious depiction of the petty little things that we humans cling to in life. The historical context of the parent in question being Abraham Lincoln and the timing being the early half of the Civil War seemed almost irrelevant to me, and I found the last couple of (short) chapters rather unconvincing and unsatisfying in winding down an otherwise incredible book. Nonetheless...what an incredible work! Loved it and highly recommend it. If you find it hard to get past the first couple of chapters, don't give up - it'll be worth it!

• An damaged book arrived

  新品で買ったのに、カバーが破けて穴があいていました。残念です。 I thought I bought a brand new book. But the cover was partly torn making a hole on it when it arrived. It’s disappointing.

• 最後まで分かりませんでした

  これまで「短くて恐ろしいフィルの時代」などの短編で評価されていた作者の初の長編。 ニューヨークタイムズベストセラーで、諸表もおおむね高く、期待して読んだんですが、結局最後までよく分かりませんでした。 かの有名なアブラハム・リンカーンの子供ウィリアムが11歳で早逝したことで、墓場の様々な霊が語るという形で話は進んでいきます。 ですがこの霊の語るいろいろな話のほとんどがどう関係しているのかがなかなか把握できず、最後まで読めば分かるのかと思いながら読み進めていきましたが、そのまま終わりました。 ただ単に読解力がないだけの話かもしれませんが。

• It's worth the investment

  I found this novel a bit difficult to follow at first, but once I understood who the characters were and how the dynamics worked, I found myself deeply involved with the story and characters. It's probably one of the most moving novels I have read in the past year. The Bardo is place between life and death, where people have to come to terms (or not) with mortality. I don't want to say more because I don't want to spoil the story, but I found it quite a human and humane story. Definitely worth reading.

• brilliant, experimental

  This novel is probably not for everyone, but I loved it. I enjoyed the chaotic dialogue of the 'sick' characters, their interrupting each other, the disorderly descriptions of each other, sort of stream of consciousness inner thinking. I also can't say why, but having each character 'sign' his/ her contribution also really worked. It didn't read like a play, exactly, but rather like testimony. I am sure there are better comparisons which I haven't read, but it reminded me of 'Under Milkwood' and naturally 'Our town'. I enjoyed the historical accounts (be they true or false) of Lincoln in those terrible days, their variety reminding the reader of how difficult it is to pin down the reality of things, but also to reflect on history in general, and on what we have accepted as true. I have never considered how Lincoln's personal loss might have altered the way in which he approached his presidency and the war, so I was glad for that new perspective as well. The letters damning Lincoln for the war, for the deaths it incurred, articulate the voices, the victims of war, that make you ask the old question why does history repeat itself? Why don't we learn? Saunder's rendering of the slave 'shards' inner-thinking and reactions also convinced me, as did the image of Abe Lincoln accompanied by the spirit of a former slave seeking the everyday, taken-for-granted freedom enjoyed by whites. Lincoln's words to his dead son are heart-breaking, as is the exploration of guilt feelings traversed by the bereft parents. I begged another reader I know not to tell me her impressions, as I was just starting the book, reading it with great enthusiasm, and alarmed by her poorly hidden disgust with the work. I think she (Greek, old school communist) didn't care for an American story in which Lincoln was a tarnished character, found (as a doting grandma to lively twin boys) the death of Willie abhorrant, and had no patience with occasional transmogrification.

• An immersive and genuinely gripping read

  I had been slightly resistant to reading George Saunders' Booker Prize-winning Lincoln In The Bardo, because I'd seen quite a lot of slightly smug comments about it on social media in which people said 'Of course, it's challenging - but so rewarding' as if reading an experimental novel is somehow like getting your Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award or volunteering in Chad, and everyone should congratulate you for it. And also, while I've no problem with novels that experiment with form, I don't think it should come at the expense of plot and character. Fortunately, though, Lincoln In The Bardo is really not a particularly difficult read. It's told through the voices of over 100 characters, who will sometimes speak for several pages, sometimes only for a few words. Sometimes sentences are split between two characters, with one breaking off halfway through to handover to another. However, the characters with the most to say are so immediately engaging that the unusual way in which the narrative is constructed very soon starts to feel perfectly natural. The story is set during the American Civil War and deals with the death at the White House of Abraham Lincoln's 11-year-old son, Willie, while his parents host an extravagant party downstairs. Distraught, Lincoln visits the cemetery crypt alone at night to visit his son's body. Unbeknownst to him, the cemetery is inhabited by spirits trapped in the 'bardo', which appears to be akin to some sort of limbo between this world and the next and from which they are reluctant or unable to move on due to a sort of denial that they are dead at all. Coffins to them are only 'sick-boxes' and dead bodies are 'sick-forms', while the spirits themselves take on bizarre and grotesque appearances that the living cannot see. Concerned for poor Willie Lincoln and fearing that he too will be trapped in the bardo - a terrible fate for a child - if his father can't achieve some sort of closure and let him go, the spirits take it upon themselves to help Lincoln come to terms with Willie's death and therefore to help Willie's soul move on and find peace. Interspersed with all this are the personal testimonies of the spirits themselves and brief digressions in which they talk about their own lives and experiences. Our primary narrators are Vollman, a printer killed in a workplace accident before he could finally consummate his marriage to his much younger wife; Bevins, a gay man who took his own life after being rejected by his lover; and the Reverend Everly Thomas, who is convinced he will be damned if he leaves the bardo but can't - for reasons unclear - articulate why. Vollman and Bevins are a charming double act, while the Reverend is an altogether more ambiguous but fascinating figure, and the myriad voices of the other spirits add many extra layers of perspective and historical detail to the story - soldiers, slaves, paupers, society beauties, they're all here. Also scattered through the story are short extracts from biographies, eyewitness accounts, letters and histories of Lincoln, some real, some created by Saunders. Some are enlightening, some contradictory, some judgmental (sometimes heartbreakingly so) and I felt they also provided a break from the intensity of the voices of the spirits and gave the story some grounding beyond the supernatural realm of the main narrative. What you won't get from this book, though, is much detail about Lincoln himself; this isn't a biographical novel at all and Lincoln as a character is actually a peripheral one. Dealing as it does with the death of a child, a grieving father and some characters with some deeply troubled backgrounds, Lincoln In The Bardo is sometimes deeply sad, although never sentimental. But it's also far more funny than you might expect, and some of the most touching moments don't involve Lincoln and Willie at all. This is an unusual novel, and it certainly won't be to everyone's taste - reader reviews seem very much divided regarding the style and structure - but it is absolutely not the challenging slog some have suggested it to be. In fact, it's a simple story, but cleverly and unusually told, and the realm of the bardo and its inhabitants are so vividly rendered, the voices of each character so personal and immediate, that I found this an immersive and genuinely gripping read.

• Hipnotizante

  Com estrutura diferente de qualquer outro romance e narrado por vozes diversas, essa é uma história profundamente tocante (e por vezes muito divertida) sobre amor e perda, sobre aceitação da própria finitude e da finitude de quem amamos. Uma leitura deliciosa e impactante.

• Lincoln in the Bardo is a demanding novel, but also a humane and deeply instructive one.

  Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders is a daring, emotionally restrained, and quietly profound novel about grief, responsibility, and moral endurance. It's set over a single night in 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln visits the crypt of his young son Willie, who has died during a typhoid outbreak while the American Civil War is entering its bloodiest phase. From this spare historical premise, Saunders constructs a chorus of voices (spirits lingering in the “bardo”, a Tibetan Buddhist concept of an in-between state) who observe, interrupt, misremember, and refract Lincoln’s private sorrow. The novel is part historical fiction, part metaphysical meditation. Quotations from 19th-century sources (some authentic, some invented) are woven into a fragmented, almost documentary structure. The dead narrate the living; the marginal speak more than the powerful. Lincoln himself appears only intermittently, yet his presence dominates the book. His grief isn't theatrical. It is heavy, restrained, and morally consequential. Saunders’ style places the novel in conversation with writers like William Faulkner (polyphonic voices), Virginia Woolf (interiority), and Thornton Wilder (the dead reflecting on the living). Yet Lincoln in the Bardo is distinctly his own book: compassionate without sentimentality, experimental without obscurity, and morally serious without preaching. Set in early 1862, the novel captures a nation at its breaking point. Lincoln’s personal loss mirrors a collective catastrophe in which hundreds of thousands of young men will die. The book implicitly asks a harrowing question: how does a leader continue to send other men’s sons into war while mourning his own child? Saunders never answers this directly; but the tension is the novel’s moral engine... The portrait of Lincoln here is strikingly countercultural. He isn't defined by bravado, dominance, or emotional suppression. Instead, Saunders presents masculinity as grounded in duty, compassion, self-command, and moral endurance. Pro-social traits on display include: - Emotional honesty without self-indulgence: Lincoln allows himself to grieve deeply, but he doesn't make his pain the centre of the world. - Burden-bearing responsibility: He absorbs sorrow so that the work (preserving the Union, ending slavery) can continue. - Empathy extended outward: Even in grief, Lincoln’s concern is not only for his son, but for the countless other sons who will die. - Restraint and dignity: His masculinity is quiet, internal, and oriented toward service rather than recognition. For men and boys, Lincoln in the Bardo offers a powerful corrective to both emotional repression and performative vulnerability. It models a mature masculinity that: => Accepts suffering as part of responsibility, not as an excuse to withdraw. => Treats grief as something to be carried with meaning, not broadcast for validation. => Places private pain in service of a larger moral purpose. => Understands leadership as sacrifice rather than self-expression. This isn't a book about winning, conquering, or posturing. It's about endurance, conscience, and love under unbearable weight. In an era that often caricatures masculinity as either toxic or fragile, this novel reminds us that some of the most admirable male virtues are quiet ones: steadfastness, compassion, and the willingness to carry sorrow so others may live. Lincoln in the Bardo is a demanding novel, but also a humane and deeply instructive one.

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