We had a great time discussing this on the podcast, and thanks to my lovely book club for agreeing to read it, so that I could then feature it on the show. I loved this book so much when I finished reading it I immediately turned to the beginning and started again. I recommend the audiobook, too – not instead of the print version, but as well as – which has an amazing cast of characters. A taster here and cast list (eyebrow raising).
Meanwhile, our book club reviews and scores over on the main site, here.
It's a little out of date now, but the last George Saunders thing I read was a wonderful long essay for the New Yorker on the Trump election campaign: "Who Are All These Trump Supporters" It begins 'Trump is wearing the red baseball cap, or not. From this distance, he is strangely handsome, well proportioned, puts you in mind of a sea captain: Alan Hale from “Gilligan’s Island,” say, had Hale been slimmer, richer, more self-confident. We are afforded a side view of a head of silver-yellow hair and a hawklike orange-red face, the cheeks of which, if stared at steadily enough, will seem, through some optical illusion, to glow orange-redder at moments when the crowd is especially pleased.'
Were Obama still in office I feel almost certain that Lincoln in the Bardo would have made his famous summer reading list. Here in the UK it has been longlisted for the Booker, although the judges of that prize with so much attention focused upon it have a tendency to choose the most unlikely of candidates; for that reason I suspect Bardo won't win. But hopefully it will win lots of readers, which can only be a good thing.