Lincoln in the Bardo

On the night after his beloved young son is laid in a Washington cemetery during the Civil War, a grieving President slips into the graveyard to hold the boy's body one last time, and the child's spirit, caught in a strange limbo alongside a chattering crowd of the dead who refuse to accept that they have died, becomes the focus of a single extraordinary night. Saunders tells the story in a wholly unusual form, a chorus of dozens of ghostly voices interrupting and contradicting one another, interleaved with fragments, real and invented, quoted from historical accounts, so the reader assembles the night from a collage of testimony rather than a conventional narrative. The result is by turns comic, bawdy, heartbreaking, and profound, a meditation on grief, mortality, and letting go, as the trapped spirits are moved by a father's love to help the child move on. This suits readers who want bold, experimental literary fiction that takes real formal risks, and who are moved by unconventional structures and deep emotional payoff. It fits less well anyone wanting a straightforward story or a single narrator, since the fragmented chorus takes some adjustment. The detail that the entire novel is voiced by a crowd of graveyard ghosts who do not realize they are dead, clinging to unfinished lives, gives the book its singular and moving form. Inventive, funny, and profoundly sad, it rewards adventurous readers. Those wanting convention may find the form disorienting, but the chorus of the dead and the father's grief are exactly what make it unforgettable.

Best for readers who want to feel something deeply, books that stay with you long after the last page. This is a book that asks something of you. Dense, layered, and best read slowly. The pacing is balanced, time to breathe between moments that matter. If you prefer to read at arm's length, this one may get too close.