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Adult Book Club Discussion: "Lincoln in the Bardo"
Please join us for the next meeting of our Adult Book Club scheduled for Tuesday, February 12, at 1:00 p.m. We will be discussing the book "Lincoln in the Bardo" by George Saunders.
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?
Copies of the books are available upon request at the library.
What: Adult Book Club
When: Tuesday, February 12 at 1:00 p.m.
Where: East Troy Lions Public Library
East Troy Lions Public Library Adult Book Club Reading List 2019
January: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
February: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
March: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
April: Emily Oliphant is Fine by Gail Honeyman
May: Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
June: Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom
July: Maisie Dobbs Vol. 1 by Jacqueline Winspear
August: Red Notice by Bill Browder
September: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
October: The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn
November: American Heiress by Jeffrey Toobin
December: Night by Elie Wiesel