This is Hans Vollman, one of our central narrators in the story (one of the 150-plus voices we hear throughout the novel), and the reader’s first blush with the Georgetown Cemetery (called Oak Hill Cemetery) where the near-entirety of the novel is set. But, then, at the almost providentially worst possible moment, a steel beam falls on him at work, and the intimacy so patiently longed for, so often thought impossible, is torn from him by his death. The printer, whose shame at himself and respect for the young woman lead him to surrender the “marriage bed” for a lifelong friendship, slowly warms his bride to the intimacy he could only have dreamt of. The first two pages of Lincoln in the Bardo detail a charming, Beauty-and-the-Beast kind of love story, albeit in a very George Saunders style: an older, overweight, lame-legged, toothless printer, a beautiful and young woman, their arranged marriage. To live a life half dead, a living death, …As in the land of darkness, yet in light, Here’s a look at George Saunders’ new and acclaimed book, Lincoln in the Bardo (appropriately released just in time for these days of Lenten journey). This review was written by Ethan Richardson & CJ Green.

Saunders lincoln in the bardo