Hear ye, hear ye, pray ye hear of the greatest story ever told. Or not. In truth here of an experimentation so vast and intrinsically overdone that the impact of said experiment served only to dim the bright within.
Yeah, I’m watching Game of Thrones again and also listening to Lincoln in the Bardo. I simply cannot suffer both at once. Lincoln is going to lose.
The book was named a top 10 by multiple well read and well sourced media outlets including the New York Times. Generally I take the opinion of that review very highly. In this instance they may not be wrong persay, but the way I am indulging in the book limits its value to me tremendously. This is a book that needs to be read. I cannot for the life of me sink into the audio in spite of a dramatic cast that features many of my favorite narrators.
The book is a meditation on the multi-perspective view. Most passages are cobbled together from accounts or voices from the afterworld that come together to form a complete picture of a moment or a life. The NY Times argues the effect of this can seem overwrought. Saying, “The supernatural chatter can grow tedious at times — the novel would have benefited immensely from some judicious pruning — but their voices gain emotional momentum as the book progresses. And they lend the story a choral dimension that turns Lincoln’s personal grief into a meditation on the losses suffered by the nation during the Civil War, and the more universal heartbreak that is part of the human condition.”
I agree with the assessment but lack the time to edit my response down to such a meaningful yet snappy reply. I’ll just say this: Listening to 17 perspectives of the same scene can be a bit tedious in an audiobook, especially if you have to break into a new narrator voice for every description of who or what is saying the thing. So I’m going from voice to voice with a transitional voice in between to clean my auditory palate like so much sorbet.
I have not finished this book. It seems better suited for playing minecraft and lauding the disconnect from the real world than it does for driving to and from wherever. I’ll finish it another time, and maybe I’ll enjoy it then.
for now, too much. Too much indeed.