Sweet Spots

Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunders

–Review by Paula Jones

In the long history of literature, very few books can claim to be at-one-and-the-same-time non-fiction, fiction, biography, history, fantasy, philosophy, horror, humor, play, and legend, but Lincoln in the Bardo is exactly that––and that is only one of the reasons why the first short chapters are so difficult to read. It is also exactly why it is almost impossible to put down after the first few pages.

George Saunders builds this masterpiece upon a very real event––the death of Abraham Lincoln’s beloved 11 year-old son. On February 20, 1862, during the first year of Lincoln’s presidency, and just as the Civil War was cranking up and rapidly intensifying, William Wallace Lincoln (Willie) was struck down by typhoid. Drawing on historical accounts of the days immediately before and after Willie’s death (written or transcribed by actual witnesses to the events) Saunders creatively cuts and pastes a flood of short quotations, many of which contradict each other. The result is a theatrically dramatic dialogue between eyewitnesses to the unfolding drama. The accumulation of these first-hand accounts paints a portrait of a seriously criticized, grief-stricken, faith-challenged, and heartrendingly human Lincoln who had on at least two occasions gone back to his son’s mausoleum in the middle of the night, let himself in with a key, and sat with the decaying body. Onlookers maintain that he remained inside for some time, heaving such great cries of anguish into the night that they could be heard coming through the thick marble walls of the vault. Some claim he removed the body from the casket and gently rocked it as he sobbed.

To this foundation of mostly verifiable truth Saunders adds a ‘spirited’ dose of fiction, fabricating a few more witnesses whose voices add to the dialogue. Because he copiously footnotes both real and invented witnesses, the reader is left to just accept it for what it is or do a little ‘Googling’ to distinguish between the two. Although this can be somewhat frustrating for the history buff, the addition of those voices helps to tie authentic quotations together. read more…

Towards Mellbreak

a novel

by Marie-Elsa Bragg

–Review by Teri Hyrkas

Marie-Elsa Bragg has written a debut novel that is so splendidly textured that it may appear to the reader like a grand piece of conceptual art. The framework of the story is the multi-generational account of the Marras’ family; the setting is the area of England known as Cumbria. The narrative describes how a sheep-farming family deals with the difficult and imposing cultural changes that occurred during the mid-twentieth century in Cumbria. With that seemingly straight forward plot line, Towards Mellbreak could have been an ordinary family chronicle, but Bragg’s storytelling is so vivid and richly expressive that her tale creates an unparalleled reading experience.

Bragg, an ordained Priest in the Church of England, is familiar with Cumbria through time spent there with her father’s family, and it is to them that she has dedicated Towards Mellbreak (Penguin Random House UK, 2017). The book is an homage to the generations of people who have lived on this rugged and isolated landscape of Northwest England; it is also a prose-poem to the land, its fells, lakes and rivers, flora, fauna and truculent weather. read more…