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Lincoln in the Bardo cover art

Lincoln in the Bardo

Written by: George Saunders
Narrated by: Nick Offerman,David Sedaris,George Saunders,Carrie Brownstein,Don Cheadle,Lena Dunham,Bill Hader,Kirby Heyborne,Keegan-Michael Key,Julianne Moore,Megan Mullally,Susan Sarandon,Ben Stiller,Various
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Publisher's Summary

***WINNER OF THE 2018 AUDIE AWARD FOR AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR***

The long-awaited first novel from the author of
Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented

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 eleven-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 returns, alone, to the crypt several times 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 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.

Lincoln in the Bardo
is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

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
Julianne 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 Random House Audio

What the critics say

"A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review

“Grief guts us all, but rarely has it been elucidated with such nuance and brilliance as in Saunders’s Civil War phantasmagoria. Heartrending yet somehow hilarious, Saunders’s zinger of an allegory holds a mirror to our perilous current moment.”O: The Oprah Magazine

“An extended national ghost story . . . As anyone who knows Saunders’s work would expect, his first novel is a strikingly original production.”The Washington Post

What listeners say about Lincoln in the Bardo

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

fustrating

could not get past the format, the multitude of quotations, with the verbal source references took away from the story - which i never got to. I could only stick with 1/2 hour before i wrote it off. might be good later but not going to get there.

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5 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding

Exceptional and full of heart. This story was not at all what I expected, in the very best way.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A strange tale from purgatory

This is an unusual story that is focused on souls in the afterlife. It can be charming, crude or shocking - sometimes all at once. The author does examine and explore the idea of loss - both for the living and the dead - in great detail and in some interesting and surprising ways. If you enjoy reading/listening to books that are off the beaten path, then I recommend this book. At first I wasn't sure, but I really enjoyed this book by the end and will probably listen to it again.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Not worth it

A pure struggle to get through and finish. A confusing recollection is a serious of short stories where often the titles were longer than the story. Reader: Upset.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Impossible to follow

Bought it for a road trip. Over an hour into the drive I had absolutely no idea what was going on. It took me reading the reviews here to realise that about 30% of what constituted the disjointed sentences that make up the "story" were footnotes. A daring foray into the absurd for the format that, in my opinion, yielded incredibly poor results.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Fantastical

No question about this G. Saunders creative outing, but a bit of a grunt to listen to... not because of the narrators, they were all excellent. The story simply was tortuous in places and the citations, although appropriate were distracting. I will read it and see if I feel better about the whole thing. My recommendation is: go ahead and give it a try. You may enjoy it a lot.

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

I wanted to love it

This was rather confusing to follow. The full cast narration was impressive but that's it.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Great performance but story is not my cup of tea.

Very unique book. Part fiction, part biography / history, part philosophy. I feel like it went into some interesting ideas, such as is it really the fault of people doing bad things, or has fate/biology/environment that forced them into it? But then it will just completely switch to some other idea, not going too deep into any one. Overall an okay story. The performance was amazing, but performance can't overcompensate the material.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

didn't finish

struggled to follow the story with the format. hard to get through when at work.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Boring and annoying

Styled around a clumsy gimmick, this audiobook was a big disappointment. It’s a series of short excerpts from other works, real or ostensible, with each excerpt (some just phrases) followed by a citation. Very clunky. Content a series of banal observations.

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