Bought at the Strand (I think): Purchased several weeks ago to read while on a ten-day cruise in Greece and Turkey, so I can't recall exactly where I got this poetic bizarre novel. After reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The Lovely Bones, it seemed natural to follow up with a depiction of the journey of Abraham Lincoln's little boy Willie in the after life. Saunders imagines a nebulous in-between land as a bridge from life to death. Willie Lincoln perishes of typhoid in the White House while his parents host an elaborate ball and the Civil War rages. Willie's spirit is ensnared by souls of the damned as other departed spirits try to wrest him free. Saunders employs a strange technique--each short chapter is composed of quotes and sources as if this were an historical document. Sections pertaining to events on earth use excerpts from memoirs and histories while those dealing with events in the spirit realm are attributed to the ghosts who speak them. A slew of characters come to life (or death) as Saunders depicts how they passed and their limbo-like status as they await a final judgment. A hunter must spend eternity comforting each animal he mercilessly slaughtered. An African-American enslaved woman repeatedly raped while alive can no longer speak. A repressed gay man is all noses, mouths and eyes since he pushed down his senses in life. Much spookier and more frightening than either of the previously mentioned books on heaven. Fascinating view of 19th century American life as well as a thoughtful fantasy of death and redemption and a searing portrait of Lincoln and his troubled state of mind during the worst part of the war.
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