Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Published 2017 · 369 pages · 60,164 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is Lincoln in the Bardo to read?
Lincoln in the Bardo scores 59 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Saunders creates distinctive voices for dozens of ghosts, each with period-appropriate vocabulary ranging from formal nineteenth-century prose to crude vernacular. Historical documents add another layer of language. The variety is deliberate and expressive.
- Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
- The novel is constructed from short passages—some just a line or two—attributed to different speakers. This fragmentary form creates its own syntax, building meaning through accumulation and juxtaposition. Reading it requires adjustment.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- The bardo ghosts philosophize constantly about their conditions, creating explicit discussions of death, attachment, and letting go. But Saunders grounds these abstractions in the ghosts' particular obsessions and the Lincolns' specific grief.
- Information density: 57 out of 100
- Saunders packs the novel with historical research presented as quoted documents, ghostly testimonies, and competing accounts of the same events. The density is part of the experience—truth emerges from contradictions.
- Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
- The story of Willie Lincoln's death and his father's grief emerges through the ghosts' observations and historical fragments. Saunders never enters Lincoln's consciousness directly. You construct the emotional center from indirect evidence.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- The bardo itself becomes a symbol of American history—the unfinished business, the unwillingness to let go. Saunders develops this through the ghosts' stories, each carrying its own symbolic weight.
- Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
- Saunders views his ghosts with complex affection, finding comedy in their self-deceptions while honoring their suffering. The historical documents add ironic counterpoint, showing how official accounts differ from private experience.
- Resolution withholding: 35 out of 100
- The novel moves toward Willie's release from the bardo and Lincoln's return to the war. Saunders provides this narrative closure while leaving questions about grief, duty, and the afterlife productively open.
- Structural complexity: 47 out of 100
- The form itself is radically unconventional—a novel constructed from short attributed passages, alternating between ghost voices and historical citations. This structure is the book's most demanding feature.
How Lincoln in the Bardo is regarded
Lincoln in the Bardo holds a literary regard score of 67 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.