Review: Lincoln in the Bardo

I recently finished Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders over the course of one day. I'm personally anointing it with the title "most impressive book of the year."I read the first ten or so pages and worried that my kindle was broken, that's how different Saunders' formatting is. But later, once I understood the pattern, I flew through the rest of it in one sitting.To be honest I can't remember why I downloaded it from my library's ebook collection in the first place. No one recommended this to me, and I don't think I even saw any book-tubers talking about this one much. Still, it definitely blew me away.Lincoln in the Bardo is about a sort of ghost realm where various characters are stuck after their death. These characters can see the real world but can't communicate with living people, and their attachments to their previous lives are holding them back from moving on towards the afterlife. The main character of this book is the recently deceased Willy Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, i.e. the 16th president of the United States.For context, some of the chapters in Lincon in the Bardo are constructed entirely out of excerpts from real people's accounts of the Lincoln Whitehouse. Saunders cuts and arranges sentences from letters, biographies, and real journal entries to show readers strikingly emotional accounts of Willy Lincoln's death. But then, between these chapters, Saunders builds the fantasy realm of the Bardo. Using straightforward symbolism and a bit of raunchy imagery, Saunders' description of the Bardo toes the line between surrealist fever dream and indulgent adult fairy tale.Normally, I stay away from historical fiction that features real people. Especially with Lincoln, I think many writers have a tendency to over-romanticize him. I prefer my fictional characters and my historical characters separate. However, this book caught me off guard and I found that not only did I enjoy the melding of fact and fiction, I was truly envious of Saunders' ability to have uncovered so much interesting research about just two or three nights during the 19th century, as well as his imaginative world-building prowess. For any history buffs, fear not: your precious Lincoln family is neither unduly elevated or slandered in this book.I really enjoyed the experimental style of this book, and I happily give it 5 stars. However, my biggest hesitation about the plot was (MAJOR SPOILER DO NOT READ):Towards the end, the ghosts take turns inhabiting the body of President Lincoln. When they do this, they aren't really able to control him, but they share his thoughts, and are able to immediately know everything about the world that Lincoln knows. In the final chapter, the novel seems to suggest that President Lincoln continued to carry the ghost of a former slave in him as he went on to preside over the Union during the Civil War. I enjoyed this part for the satisfaction and validation it brought to the slave ghost's character, who had yearned to be educated and to have choices in his actions, but I thought it was a somewhat gimmicky comment on Civil War era race relations. I didn't like that only a privileged white male politician could provide the closure and relief that the spirit of a former slave needed. Furthermore, I refuse to accept that Lincoln had some supernatural dosage of empathy, and I also refuse to think of Lincoln as the savior of all people of color. Saunders doesn't go so far as to outright make any claims that Lincoln was influenced by this ghost, but featuring this at the very end did strike me as a strange choice.Regardless, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a quick read for the holidays. The experimental format is refreshing and spooky and great way to cleanse your palette of school or work reading over xmas!