Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

8 reviews

kananineko's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I loved this weird little book. I know it won’t work for everyone, but somehow it worked for me. I love absurd concepts like this and things that examine life and death and afterlife and the in-between and history, so of course I loved it. If you have similar interests, you may feel the same way. But you also might not, because it’s a very weird book. I love the play-like format and the parts that put together historical documents to recount a moment. I’m so glad I read this book and I’m very glad that i I own it!I loved this weird little book. I know it won’t work for everyone, but somehow it worked for me. I love absurd concepts like this and things that examine life and death and afterlife and the in-between and history, so of course I loved it. If you have similar interests, you may feel the same way. But you also might not, because it’s a very weird book. I love the play-like format and the parts that put together historical documents to recount a moment. I’m so glad I read this book and I’m very glad that I own it!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Slavery, and Suicide

Moderate: Sexual violence, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Racial slurs, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, and War

Minor: Alcohol, Animal death, Classism, Cursing, Excrement, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, and Homophobia

eli_like_a_lie's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Racism, and Grief

Moderate: Rape, Homophobia, Body horror, Suicide, and Cursing

Minor: Confinement, Domestic abuse, and Excrement

seadeepy's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Grief, War, Suicide, and Violence

Moderate: Body horror, Excrement, Rape, and Slavery

laurajones's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, War, Xenophobia, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child death, Sexual content, Death, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Suicide, Self harm, and Racial slurs

Moderate: Sexual assault and Classism

Minor: Excrement

kulera's review against another edition

challenging dark funny sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

The premise was interesting, and it had some moments of beauty, but overall it was was slow and arduous to read. Just not my kind of book. Plus the few moments in which women and especially enslaved people were represented were uncomfortable to read. The author did not seem to think critically about the language he (as a non-Black writer) was using.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Suicide, Child death, Death, Torture, Medical content, Slavery, Rape, Body horror, Grief, Terminal illness, and Violence

bookedbymadeline's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

What did I just read…I feel like a had a bad LSD trip 😅

Strange, unique writing style

Clever concept

Quick to read 

I had a hard time following what was happening and there wasn’t really a plot. I wanted to love this and have had it on my TBR forever but it just fell flat. 

I seem to be in the minority of not or seeing the “poetry” or understanding what’s happening half the time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Child death, Suicide, Self harm, Blood, and Cursing

Moderate: Rape, Racism, and Slavery

Minor: Animal death, War, Body horror, Pedophilia, and Racial slurs

mc_easton's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Roland Barthes called all writing “a tissue of citations,” and that’s exactly the cloth Saunders has spun for us. The novel unfolds not so much in paragraphs as in citations, taken from both historical texts and invented ones. As the narration bounces from quote to quote, each voice deepens or refracts or contradicts those around it. Not far into the book, Saunders encourages us to trust two voices in particular—both of whom are fictional, both of whom are dead. Before the end, we have learned even to doubt these two men whose perspectives are, like so many of us, cloaked in self-protection and denial. 

The book is many things, but I suppose the simplest is its narrative arc. In the course of one night, a grief-stricken man visits a graveyard overcome with grief for his dead child while trying to decide if his war, certain to send other children to their deaths, is necessary. A man who just happens to be Abraham Lincoln.

Like all of Saunders’s work, the tale is preoccupied with ethics—the ethics of war, of grief, of death. How much grief is too much? How much hopeless clinging can we indulge in before it becomes a sin? But the flavor of ethics here is distinctly Buddhist. Even the “bardo” of the title is a Tibetan Buddhist concept of the stage between death and rebirth, or death and the afterlife. Most Buddhist sects teach that this liminal space poses a particular risk because we can become easily confused, drawn to old attachments that we refuse to let go of. 

And this is the novel’s other half, the half with Saunders’s magical realist touch: the ghosts trapped in the graveyard who, for a variety of reasons, cannot let go of their past lives. We meet a hunter who must make amends for each animal he killed, from ants to wolves. There is a real estate developer who spins like a compass needle to point in the direction of each property whenever he thinks of one, which is constantly. There are slaves who remain tormented by memory and the opportunities for happiness withheld from them. But as the cacophony unites into a chorus, hoping to save one little boy, Saunders is at his finest, assuring us that humanity collectively can commit generous, compassionate acts—and in doing so, we may liberate not only others but perhaps ourselves as well. A warmly humanist novel that nudges us to strive toward our best selves. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Slavery, Rape, Racism, Racial slurs, Grief, and Body horror

valentinagarcia's review

emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

My best book of 2018. A really magnificent historical ghost story about grief and paternal love. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death and Death

Minor: Suicide, Self harm, Slavery, and Body horror