Pachinko (Lee)
Min Jin Lee, 2017
Grand Central Publishing
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781455563920
Summary
Profoundly moving and gracefully told, Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them.
Betrayed by her wealthy lover, Sunja finds unexpected salvation when a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and bring her to Japan to start a new life.
So begins a sweeping saga of exceptional people in exile from a homeland they never knew and caught in the indifferent arc of history. In Japan, Sunja's family members endure harsh discrimination, catastrophes, and poverty, yet they also encounter great joy as they pursue their passions and rise to meet the challenges this new home presents.
Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, they are bound together by deep roots as their family faces enduring questions of faith, family, and identity. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1968
• Where—Seoul, South Korea
• Raised—Borough of Queens, New York City, NY, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; J.D., Georgetown University
• Awards—Narrative Prize for New and Emerging Writer (more below)
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Min Jin Lee is a Korean-American writer and author, whose work frequently deals with Korean American topics. Her first novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was published in 2007 and her second, Pachinko, in 2017. Both were highly regarded. Lee also served for three years seasons as a "Morning Forum" English-language columnist of South Korea's newspaper Chosun Ilbo.
Background
Although Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, her family came to the United States in 1976 when she was seven. She grew up in Elmhurst, Queens, New York, where her parents owned a wholesale jewelry store. She studied history at Yale and law at Georgetown University. She worked as a corporate lawyer in New York for several years before becoming a writer. She lived in Japan for four years (2007-11) and now lives in New York with her husband, Christopher Duffy, and her son, who is half-Japanese.
Lee has lectured about writing, literature, and politics at Columbia, Tufts, Loyola Marymount University, Stanford, Johns Hopkins (SAIS), University of Connecticut, Boston College, Hamilton College, Harvard Law School, Yale University, Ewha University, Waseda University, the American School in Japan. She has also lectured at World Women’s Forum, the Tokyo American Center of the U.S. Embassy, and the Asia Society in New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong.
Writing
Lee's short story "Axis of Happiness" won the 2004 Narrative Prize from Narrative Magazine. Another short story, "Motherland," published in the Missouri Review, won The Peden Prize for Best Short Story. The story is about a Korean family living in Japan, which is also the subject of her second novel, Pachinko (2017). Her short stories have been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts.
Her 2007 novel Free Food for Millionaires was named one of the Top 10 Novels of the Year by The Times (UK), NPR's Fresh Air, and USA Today. It was a listed as a notable novel by the San Francisco Chronicle and as a New York Times Editor's Choice. Lee's second novel, Pachinko, came out out in 2017.
Lee has also published non-fiction in anthologies and such periodicals as the The Times (UK), New York Times Magazine, Traveler, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, Wall Street Journal and Food & Wine. Further, she has published a number of reviews, among them, Toni Morrison's Home, Cynthia Ozick's Foreign Bodies, and Jodi Picoult's Wonder Woman: Love and Murder. All three appeared in The Times (UK).
Accolades
She received the NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowship for Fiction, the Peden Prize for Best Story from the Missouri Review, and the Narrative Magazine Prize for New and Emerging Writer.
While at Yale, she was awarded both the Henry Wright Prize for Nonfiction and the James Ashmun Veech Prize for Fiction. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/15/2017.)
Book Reviews
[S]tunning…. Like most memorable novels…Pachinko resists summary. In this sprawling book, history itself is a character. Pachinko is about outsiders, minorities and the politically disenfranchised. But it is so much more besides. Each time the novel seems to find its locus—Japan's colonization of Korea, World War II as experienced in East Asia, Christianity, family, love, the changing role of women—it becomes something else. It becomes even more than it was. Despite the compelling sweep of time and history, it is the characters and their tumultuous lives that propel the narrative. Small details subtly reveal the characters' secret selves and build to powerful moments…In this haunting epic tale, no one story seems too minor to be briefly illuminated. Lee suggests that behind the facades of wildly different people lie countless private desires, hopes and miseries, if we have the patience and compassion to look and listen.
Krys Lee - New York Times Book Review
The breadth and depth of challenges come through clearly, without sensationalization. The sporadic victories are oases of sweetness, without being saccharine. Lee makes it impossible not to develop tender feelings towards her characters—all of them, even the most morally compromised. Their multifaceted engagements with identity, family, vocation, racism, and class are guaranteed to provide your most affecting sobfest of the year (Most Anticipated Books of 2017).
BookRiot
[A] sprawling and immersive historical work.… Though the novel is long, the story itself is spare, at times brutally so. Sunja’s isolation and dislocation become palpable in Lee’s hands. Reckoning with one determined, wounded family’s place in history, Lee’s novel is an exquisite meditation on the generational nature of truly forging a home.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] beautifully crafted story of love, loss, determination, luck, and perseverance.… Lee's skillful development of her characters and story lines will draw readers into the work.… [T]he author's latest page-turner. —Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) An exquisite, haunting epic…moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, illuminate the narrative.… Lee's profound novel…is shaped by impeccable research, meticulous plotting, and empathic perception.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A]n absorbing saga.… [L]ove, luck, and talent combine with cruelty and random misfortune in a deeply compelling story.… An old-fashioned epic whose simple, captivating storytelling delivers both wisdom and truth.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Pachinko...then take off on your own:
1. The novel's opening sentence reads, "History has failed us, but no matter." What does the sentence mean, and what expectations might it establish for the reader? Why the tail end of the sentence, "but no matter"?
2. Talk about the thematic significance of the book's title. Pachinko is a sort of slot/pinball game played throughout Japan, and it's arcades are also a way for foreigners to find work and accumulate money.
3. What are the cultural differences between Korea and Japan?
4. As "Zainichi," non-Japanese, how are Koreans treated in Japan? What rules must they adhere to, and what restrictions apply to them?
5. Follow-up to Questions 3 and 4: Discuss the theme of belonging, which is pervades this novel. How does where one "belongs" tie into self-identity? Consider Mozasu and his son, Solomon. In what ways are their experiences similar when it comes to national identity? How do both of them feel toward the Japanese?
6. How is World War II viewed in this novel—especially from the perspective of the various characters living in Japan? Has reading about the war through their eyes altered your own understanding of the war?
7. How would you describe Sunja and Isak. How do their differing innate talents complement one another and enable them to survive in Japan?
8. Are there particular characters you were drawn to more than others, perhaps even those who are morally compromised? If so who...and why?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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All Our Wrong Todays
Elan Mastai, 2017
Penguin Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101985137
Summary
You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we'd have? Well, it happened.
In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed...because it wasn't necessary.
Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world.
For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.
But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and—maybe, just maybe—his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality?
Tom's search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be.
All Our Wrong Todays is about the versions of ourselves that we shed and grow into over time. It is a story of friendship and family, of unexpected journeys and alternate paths, and of love in its multitude of forms.
Filled with humor and heart, and saturated with insight and intelligence and a mind-bending talent for invention, this novel signals the arrival of a major talent. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1974-75
• Where—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—Queens University; Concordia University
• Awards—Canadian Screen Award
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Elan Mastai is a Canadian screenwriter and novelist. He is best known for The F Word, for which he won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards in 2014. His debut novel, All the Wrong Todays was published in 2017 and is rumored to have fetched a seven figure advance. A time-travel-goes-awry tale, the book's breezy, humorous style has been compared to Adam Douglas's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Mastai was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, to a Canadian mother and an Israeli immigrant father. He studied film at Queen's University and Concordia University. He lives with his wife and children and an Australian Shepherd named Ruby Slippers in Toronto. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/9/2017.)
Book Reviews
Elan Mastai’s debut is a sci-fi tour de force—whip smart, imaginative, thoughtful, and funny. The novel is set in 2016, not our 2016 but a techno-utopian 2016—the result of a perpetual energy machine invented in 1965. That new, endless source of clean, cheap energy led to a burst of innovation, accelerated beyond anything we know of in this 2016. Mastai has obvious fun drawing comparisons between his "futuristic" 2016 and ours. One has airborne cars, digital clothing, interactive novels, and worldwide prosperity. The other doesn’t. READ MORE.
P.J. Adler - LitLovers
[An] amazing debut novel.… Dazzling and complex.… Fearlessly funny storytelling... In the alternative reality of our own day when many long for the chance to turn back time, some solace might be found in the masochistic pleasures of this trippy and ultimately touching novel.
Washington Post
All Our Wrong Todays is an incredibly creative work. It’s as if Mastai time traveled and took copious notes of what a future utopian world would be. The science is as engaging as the romance. Mastai has mastered the art of endearing himself to an audience through both knowledge and entertainment. It’s definitely out of this world — or an alternate universe.
Associated Press
Shades of sci-fi, but also an endearing comedy about family and friendship.
New York Post
[All Our Wrong Todays] earns the case it makes for the messiness, heartbreak and imperfections of our world, and in doing so helped reconnect me to my fellow humans, whom, at the moment, I find inscrutable and frightening in equal measure.
Ron Currie - Chicago Tribune
A time-travel tale that works.… A multiverse trans-timeline love story… All storytelling is time travel, but not all time travel stories are worth telling, and though I don't have the word count to properly place All Our Wrong Todays in the pantheon of chrono adventures (somewhere between Voyagers! and Ken Grimwood's Replay), it more than deserves to be on readers' shelves in any timeline.
Dallas Morning News
On top of this brilliant philosophical premise of parallel versions of one’s life and the people in it—of what might have been had history unfolded different—Mastai’s language is also rife with an infectious humor you won’t be able to stop reading.
HarpersBazaar.com
You don't have to be a sci-fi fan to become totally enthralled with this fresh, time-travel novel by screenwriter Mastai . [A]n utterly clever, entertaining love story.
RealSimple.com
With humor, grace and dizzying skill, Mastai crafts a time-traveling novel that challenges every convention of the trope, and succeeds brilliantly. His droll, unassuming writing style couches a number of razor-sharp critiques while the endless array of...possibilities give the story its drive and irresistible exuberance heartrending, funny, smart, and stunningly, almost brazenly hopeful (a Top Pick).
Romance Times Book Reviews
[I]maginative . [T]he story takes several startling turns as Tom tries to change the future of this timeline. Mastai has fun with all the usual conventions of time travel . and the cherry on top is his dialogue, reminiscent of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Mastai creates a fascinating tapestry of interconnected alternate realities . A potent mixture of sincere introspection and a riveting examination of time travel and alternate realities, this highly recommended novel is reminiscent of Jo Walton's My Real Children with the breeziness of Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.
Library Journal
Mastai's utopian worldbuilding is complex and imaginative . An entertaining rom-com of errors, All Our Wrong Todays backflips through paradoxes while exploring provocative questions of grief and the multitudes we contain within ourselves. Ultimately, it's a story about love—and the stupid things we'll do for it.
BookPage
(Starred review.) [T]he story of the world's first and, unfortunately for us all, most unqualified time traveler. Mastai considers not only the workings, but the consequences (and there are many) of time travel, packing so much into the last 100 pages it feels as if there's a literal weight pressing on your mind. [E]ntertaining.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion question for All the Wrong Todays...then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the ways in which All Our Wrong Todays' alternate 2016 is similar or dissimilar to the 2016 we know. Which reality do you prefer? How do you view the level of advanced technology in the first 2016? Consider the improvements it makes to life, as well as the ways in which it detracts from life? Overall, how would you characterize the hyper-technological world—as utopian or dystopian?
2. What could possibly go wrong? Tom Barren travels back to 1965, the year the Goettreider Engine (get the play on the name?) was invented. Why does his presence cause the machine to go haywire?
3. What light does Elan Mastai's book shine of the problems and paradoxes of time travel?
4. How do the "Tom Barrens" differ from one another in the alternate timelines?
5. And then there's Penelope. What do you think of her?
6. What does Tom learn by the end of the book? What insights does he gain? How about you? What insights have you gained—regarding what it means to be human, the importance of family, and the power of love?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Swimming Lessons
Claire Fuller, 1017
Tin House Books
356 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781941040515
Summary
An exhilarating literary mystery that will keep readers guessing until the final page.
Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but instead of giving them to him, she hides them in the thousands of books he has collected over the years.
When Ingrid has written her final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two daughters, Flora and Nan.
Twelve years later, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window, but he's getting older and this unlikely sighting is chalked up to senility. Flora, who has never believed her mother drowned, returns home to care for her father and to try to finally discover what happened to Ingrid.
But what Flora doesn't realize is that the answers to her questions are hidden in the books that surround her. Scandalous and whip-smart, Swimming Lessons holds the Coleman family up to the light, exposing the mysterious truths of a passionate and troubled marriage. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 9, 1967
• Where—Oxfordshire, England, UK
• Education—Winchester School of Art; M.A., University of Winchester
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Winchester, England
laire Fuller is an English writer and the author of the novels Our Endless Numbered Days (2015), Swimming Lessons (2017), and Bitter Orange (2018). She was born and raised in Oxfordshire.
In the 1980s she studied sculpture at Winchester School of Art, working mainly in wood and stone, before embarking on a marketing career. Later, she attained her Master's in creative and critical writing from the University of Winchester.
Awards
Fuller began writing fiction at the age of 40. She told a fellow writer,
Getting the words down is torture. Once they're written, I love rewriting, editing and polishing.
The polishing has paid off handsomely, winning her a number of literary prize—the Desmond Elliott Prize for her 2015 debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days; the BBC Opening Lines Short Story Competition in 2014; and the Royal Academy Short Story Award in 2016.
Fuller and her husband live in Winchester, England. Her son and a daughter are grown. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/9/2017.)
Book Reviews
"Gil Coleman looked down from the first-floor window of the bookshop and saw his dead wife standing on the pavement below." This provocative sentence opens the story of a woman's failed marriage.… Fuller successfully creates two discomfiting narratives, a strong backdrop for the story's essential mystery.
Publishers Weekly
Did Ingrid Coleman drown or just disappear during the summer of 1992? Fuller's richly layered second novel raises these questions and more.… [W]ith revelations and surprises, Fuller's well-crafted, intricate tale captures the strengths and shortcomings of ordinary people. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Fuller proves to be a master of temporal space, taking readers through flashbacks and epistolary chapters at a pace timed to create wonder and suspense. It's her beautiful prose, though, that rounds this one out, as she delves deeply to examine the legacies of a flawed and passionate marriage
Booklist
Fuller's tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it's often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth. Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion of Swimming Lessons ... then take off on your own:
1. Do you think Gil ever found the letters Ingrid wrote to him? Any of them? Some of them? All of them? If so, when? (There is no agreement on this point among readers.)
2. Talk about what the letters reveal about Ingrid's marriage to Gil and the kind of man he is (or was)?
3. What about Ingrid—what do we learn about her? What were her motives for writing the letters? Are they to be believed—is she trustworthy? Why did Ingrid write the letters to Gil rather than to her daughters?
4. Consider the symbolic significance of Ingrid's placing letters in between the pages of books (stories within stories). What might that suggest about the thematic concerns of Fuller's novel…or perhaps the truthfulness of the letters themselves…or the truthfulness of any retelling of anyone's past?
5. Talk about the daughters. How are Nan and Flora alike, and how are they different from one another? Nan, for instance, can not imagine her mother alive, while Flora continues to believe, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, that Ingrid is still alive. What do those divergent beliefs say about the sisters?
6. When Ingrid finds another woman breastfeeding Nan, what does it mean that Ingrid would "eventually understand"? Who was the woman? Was she Gabriel's mother, perhaps? Or someone else? What is the significance, if any, of that scene?
7. Speaking of Gabriel's mother: what do you make of her and her decision not to marry Gil, as her son insists?
8. As you read Swimming Lessons, did you think of Where'd You Go Bernadette? If you've read Maria Semple's book, how do the two novels compare?
9. What is the significance of the book's title "Swimming Lessons"?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Impossible Fortress
Jason Rekulak, 2017
Simon & Schuster
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501144417
Summary
Until May 1987, fourteen-year-old Billy Marvin of Wetbridge, New Jersey, is a nerd, but a decidedly happy nerd.
Afternoons are spent with his buddies, watching copious amounts of television, gorging on Pop-Tarts, debating who would win in a brawl (Rocky Balboa or Freddy Krueger? Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel? Magnum P.I. Or T.J. Hooker?), and programming video games on his Commodore 64 late into the night.
Then Playboy magazine publishes photos of Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White, Billy meets expert programmer Mary Zelinsky, and everything changes.
A love letter to the 1980s, to the dawn of the computer age, and to adolescence—a time when anything feels possible—The Impossible Fortress will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you remember in exquisite detail what it feels like to love something—or someone—for the very first time. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Jason Rekulak is the publisher of Quirk Books, where he has acquired a dozen New York Times bestsellers. Some of his most notable acquisitions at Quirk include Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the YA fantasy novel series Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which has spent five years on the New York Times bestseller list. Jason lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two children. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] charmingly vintage take on geek love, circa 1987 in New Jersey.... Rekulak’s novel will have readers of a certain age waxing nostalgic about Space Invaders and humming Hall and Oates, but it’s still a fun ride that will appeal to all.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Rekulak layers in nostalgic eighties references, like a mixtape created by Mary’s recently deceased mother, an oblique nod to Beetlejuice, and the wacky group of misfit friends with a 'really good' plan. Despite all that, in the end the plot manages to magically subvert the time period while also paying homage to it. An unexpected retro delight.
Booklist
In a small town in North Jersey in the late 1980s, a 14-year-old boy and his Commodore 64 find love and trouble.... Joyfully evoked with period details and pop-culture references, 1980s nostalgia is the only excuse for marketing this book to adults; otherwise, Rekulak's debut is a middle-grade novel all the way. A good one!
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Games play a significant role in The Impossible Fortress, and throughout the novel, the characters play real and metaphorical games with one another. Give some examples. How do Mary and Billy use games to communicate? Why might they find it easier to talk through games than in real life?
2. The protagonist of the novel is known as "Billy" to his mother and friends, but identifies himself as "Will" to Mary and her father, and to players of The Impossible Fortress. Why do you think he uses variations of his name?
3. Billy is intelligent enough to program his own computer games, but his grades are abysmal. Why do you think he struggles in school? Do you know any people who struggled in high school? What are they doing now?
4. Describe Billy’s interactions with Principal Hibble. Do you think he has Billy’s best interests at heart? What did you think of Hibble’s reaction after Billy says his goal is to make video games and start his own company? In chapter 9, Billy says "[Hibble] was right. I knew no college would ever want me—but that was okay, because I didn’t want them." Why do you think Billy feels this way?
5. After Billy is suspended from school in chapter 9, his mother returns his computer to him telling him, "You promise you’re not playing Pac-Man?... Then get to work." Were you surprised by her change of heart? What motivates her decision?
6. In chapter 3, Billy says "Even though [Alf] and Clark were my best friends, I hadn’t told them about my secret plan to grow up and make video games for a living." Why is Billy reticent to share his dream with his friends? Describe their friendship. Are they supportive of each other? In what ways?
7. Discuss the structure of The Impossible Fortress. What is the effect of beginning each chapter with a passage of computer code? Did these passages deepen your understanding of the story? In what ways?
8. Explain the significance of the title. What "impossible fortresses" do the characters encounter within the novel? Did you notice any similarities between The Impossible Fortress video game and the plan to break into Zelinsky’s store? What about the plan to enter Mary’s school?
9. In chapter 20, Mary tells Billy, "If you want to know the truth, I don’t have a lot of friends right now." Why does Billy find this so hard to believe? What did you think of Mary? Did you learn anything that might explain Mary’s current social status?
10. In chapter 24, after Billy is brought to the police station, he is eager to tell the police "[My] only crime was buying a dirty magazine.... Everything else could be blamed on Tyler and Rene. They were the real bad guys." Did you agree with Billy? Is he culpable for what takes place in Zelinsky’s store? Explain your answer. What would you have done if you were in Billy’s position?
11. There are three different explanations for why Tyler is fired from Zelinsky’s store: Mary’s original explanation, Tyler’s explanation, and Mary’s revised explanation. Which story did you find most believable? How would you explain the discrepancies among the different versions? What do their lies (or omissions) say about the respective characters?
12. At the police station in chapter 25, Zelinsky tells Billy that Mary was "fooling [him] right back. [He doesn’t] know her at all. And [he’s] too dumb to even realize it." What secrets is Mary hiding from Billy? Did you find any of them shocking? Does learning Mary’s secret change your understanding of Tyler’s actions? If so, how?
13. In chapter 26, Billy says, "After passing most of my freshman year in relative anonymity, I’d finally made a name for myself." How has Billy succeeded in "making a name for himself"? Discuss his classmates’ reactions. Do you think their opinions are justified? Why or why not?
14. Early in the novel, we learn that Billy has never met his father. In chapter 12, he tells Mary, "I wish I knew why he left. That’s one thing I’ve never understood." Do any of the events in this book offer Billy a new perspective on his parents’ relationship?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders, 2017
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812995343
Summary
*Winner, 2017 Man Booker Prize
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? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 2, 1958
• Where—Amarillo, Texas, USA
• Education—B.S., Colorado School of Mines; M.F.A., Syracuse University
• Awards—Man Booker Award; PEN/Malamud Award (more below)
• Currently—lives in Syracuse, New York
George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children's books. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, "American Psyche," to the weekend magazine of The Guardian (UK) until October 2008. In 2017, he won the Man Booker Prize for his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo.
Early life and education
Saunders was born in Amarillo, Texas. He grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago, graduating from Oak Forest High School in Oak Forest, Illinois. In 1981 he received a B.S. in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.
In 1988, Saunders was awarded an M.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University. While at Syracuse he met fellow writer and future wife Paula Redick: "we [got] engaged in three weeks, a Syracuse Creative Writing Program record that, I believe, still stands," he wrote.
Early career
From 1989 to 1996, Saunders worked as a technical writer and geophysical engineer for Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, New York. He also worked for a time with an oil exploration crew in Sumatra.
Of his scientific background, Saunders has said:
...any claim I might make to originality in my fiction is really just the result of this odd background: basically, just me working inefficiently, with flawed tools, in a mode I don't have sufficient background to really understand. Like if you put a welder to designing dresses.
Welders and dresses aside, those years also proved highly productive for Saunders in terms of fiction writing. In 1994 and 1996, he won the National Magazine Award for his short stories, "The 400-Pound CEO" and "Bounty," respectively. Both were published in Harper's. In 1996 he published his first short-story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, which became a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award. That same year, another story, "The Falls," appeared in The New Yorker, and a year later won second prize in the 1997 O. Henry Awards.
It was in 1997 that Saunders joined the faculty of Syracuse University where he still teaches creative writing in the school's MFA program. He has continued to publish fiction and nonfiction.
From 2000 on
Saunders won his third National Magazine Award in 2000 for his short story, "The Barber's Unhappiness,"published in The New Yorker. His his fourth NMA came in 2004 for the "The Red Bow," published in Esquire.
In 2006, he was awarded two highly regarded fellowships: a MacArthur Fellowship (with its prize of $500,000) and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His first nonfiction collection, The Braindead Megaphone came out in 2007. In 2009, Saunders received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 2013, Saunders won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and in 2014, he was elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Saunders gained national attention with his 2013 publication of Tenth of December, a collection of short stories. The book won the 2013 Story Prize for short-story collections and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Editors of the New York Times named it one of the "10 Best Books of 2013,"and the headline for a cover story in the paper's Magazine, called it "the best book you'll read this year."
Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders' long awaited first novel, came out in 2017 to wide acclaim.
Thematic concerns
Saunders's fiction often focuses on the absurdity of consumerism, corporate culture and the role of mass media. While many reviewers mention the satirical tone in Saunders's writing, his work also raises moral and philosophical questions. The tragicomic element in his writing has earned Saunders comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut, whose work inspired Saunders.
In a November 2015 conversation with American writer Jennifer Egan for the New York Times Saunders said that he was writing a novel set in the 19th century, which while "ostensibly historical" was also closer to science fiction than much of his previous work.
Saunders considered himself an Objectivist in his twenties but is now repulsed by the philosophy, comparing it to neoconservative thinking. He is now a student of Nyingma Buddhism. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/8/2017.)
Book Reviews
The hype surrounding the book’s release is well deserved: this is a wildly imaginative story of Abraham Lincoln’s near paralyzing grief over the death of his youngest son. Saunders then deftly unites that personal grief with the grief of an entire nation in the throes of civil war. READ MORE.
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
Saunders's short stories…tend to vacillate between two impulses: satire and black comedy, reminiscent of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut; and a more empathetic mode, closer to [Sherwood] Anderson and William Trevor. Though there are moments of dark humor in some of the ghost stories here, Bardo definitely falls into the more introspective part of that spectrum. In these pages, Saunders's extraordinary verbal energy is harnessed, for the most part, in the service of capturing the pathos of everyday life…. Saunders's novel is at its most potent and compelling when it is focused on Lincoln: a grave, deeply compassionate figure, burdened by both personal grief and the weight of the war, and captured here in the full depth of his humanity. In fact, it is Saunders's beautifully realized portrait of Lincoln—caught at this hinge moment in time, in his own personal bardo, as it were—that powers this book over its more static sections and attests to the author's own fruitful transition from the short story to the long-distance form of the novel.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
[A]n extended national ghost story, an erratically funny and piteous seance of grief. [T]he Bardo...refers to an intermediate plane between our world and the next…. [The book] seems at first a clever clip-job, an extended series of brief quotations from letters, diaries, newspaper articles, personal testimonies.... Lincoln in the Bardo teaches us how to read it. The quotations gathered from scores of different voices begin to cohere into a hypnotic conversation…. Stirred heavily into the mix…are dead people…corpses in Georgetown’s Oak Hill Cemetery.... Saunders’s deep compassion shines…[i]n the darkness of that cemetery, [as] the president realizes…his own grief has already been endured by tens of thousands of fathers and mothers across the country.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Ingenious…Saunders—well on his way toward becoming a twenty-first-century Twain—crafts an American patchwork of love and loss, giving shape to our foundational sorrows.
Vogue
The novel beats with a present-day urgency—a nation at war with itself, the unbearable grief of a father who has lost a child, and a howling congregation of ghosts, as divided in death as in life, unwilling to move on.
Vanity Fair
A brilliant, Buddhist reimagining of an American story of great loss and great love…. Saunders has written an unsentimental novel of Shakespearean proportions, gorgeously stuffed with tragic characters, bawdy humor, terrifying visions, throat-catching tenderness, and a galloping narrative, all twined around the luminous cord connecting a father and son and backlit by a nation engulfed in fire.
Elle
(Starred review.) Saunders’s mesmerizing historical novel is also a moving ghost story. A Dantesque tour through a Georgetown cemetery…[where] Abraham Lincoln visits the grave of his recently interred 11-year-old son, Willie.… [A] haunting American ballad that will inspire increased devotion among Saunders’s admirers.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) A stunningly powerful work, both in its imagery and its intense focus on death, this remarkable work of historical fiction gives an intimate view of 19th-century fears and mores through the voices of the bardo's denizens. —Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Among Saunders' most essential insights is that, in his grief over Willie, Lincoln began to develop a hard-edged empathy, out of which he decided that "the swiftest halt to the [war] (therefore the greatest mercy) might be the bloodiest."…Saunders asserts a complex and disturbing vision in which society and cosmos blur.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Lincoln in the Bardo … then take off on your own:
1. What is the bardo, and how does it function in George Saunder's book? In what way does the bardo apply to those who are living as well as the dead?
2. Talk about the various denizens of the cemetery, the ghosts who narrate and chatter among themselves. Which ghost stories did you find particularly engaging …funny …moving …sad …even irritable? Were you disoriented, even put off, by the multiplicity of voices, or were you able to maintain your footing? Was there a point at which the ghosts took on a "life" of their own … when their actions developed into a cohesive plot?
3. Follow-up to Question 2: How do the ghosts' feelings — their anger, resentments, and desires — reflect the events of their previous lives?
4. Talk about the ghosts' reactions to Lincoln's loving attention to his son. Why were they surprised by the fact that he cradled Will in his arms?
5. What does Lincoln come to understand, through his own personal loss, about the carnage of the war and the cost in lives and misery for an entire nation?
6. Talk about the two old codgers, Hans Vollman and Roger Bevins III. Would you consider them the "heroes" of the novel? Why are they so eager to have Will leave the cemetery. Where do they want him to go? What will happen should he "tarry"?
7. Why is the Reverend, unlike all the other spirits, willing to admit he is dead? And why is he convinced he will be excluded from heaven?
8. In what way does the cemetery reflect the class structure of the 19th Century? What do you make of the Rev. Thomas's explanation: "It is not about wealth. It is about comportment. It is about, let us say, being 'wealthy in spirit.'" Who among the spirits, if any of them, are "wealthy in spirit"?
9. Although the preponderant mood of the novel is dark, there is also a fair amount of hilarity. Can you you point to some passages/episodes that you found particularly funny? The bachelor ghosts, for instance?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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