Complete gibberish as far as I can tell

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

No idea

What will your next listen be?

Julian Barnes

Would you listen to another book narrated by the narrators?

Some of the narration is great - but I have no idea what they were narrating

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Mystification. I started it again twice thinking I might not have been concentrating whilst I was gardening or driving - but once they got past Willie's death it just gets sillier and sillier

Any additional comments?

I listen to and read a lot of "literary" fiction - but this is just a waste of time or too experimental for my brain

51 people found this helpful

Emperors new clothes

I think this may be a book everybody raves about because somebody clever wrote it and the critics say it's great. It's not great. It's boring and pseudo-intellectual. Like a spoof of a really clever book. Maybe you have to be American to get it. Can I have my money back please? I feel like I was conned by all the rave reviews.

50 people found this helpful

Mistake

I liked the first part of the first chapter. After that I found the constant references totally stopped any kind of flow. This is not my kind of book and I returned it having failed to be pulled in.

47 people found this helpful

Don’t buy on audible

This book does not work as an audio book. This is because there are chapters of extracts of newspapers and something called op.sit. that just serves to make the whole thing fragmented and very difficult to follow. I’m sure it makes sense in the written word though.

25 people found this helpful

Confusing, disappointing, over-hyped

This has to be one of the most over-hyped books I have ever read or listened to. It has had rave reviews and has been shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize for fiction but I have to say that I really don't understand why.

It is rambling, confusing, depressing, lacks cohesion and, for a prose work, it is full of quotes and end notes from works of non-fiction. To me, this just made the whole thing a complete mess and very difficult to concentrate upon. Additionally, the huge number of characters (and therefore voices) used in the performance made this narrative really difficult to keep track of. I lost interest after the first half and gave up on it.

Perhaps it would be better to read a hard copy, to help make sense of it all. But if you decide to do that, allow plenty of time. This is a tale that you really need to concentrate hard on and it is certainly not an uplifting story.

24 people found this helpful

Epic contemporary Shakespearean tragedy

George Saunder's epic historical and existential tragedy seems to resonate on many levels with a variety of readers. Taking the real life account of the death of Abraham Lincoln's son, exploring his grief and creating a magical realistic theatrical piece is a true wonder.

It's a listening experience for all the senses, with the beautiful music and sounds of the Civil War, as well as a host of well known voices - it's haunting in many aspects. The language is rich and variable mixing Shakespearean dialogue with modern slang.

Where it falls short are the constant breaks in the novel through footnotes describing the actual factual account of that time. It is jarring and ruins the experience - it should be left to the end and is only valid when reading. In this case Saunders sounds timid, having to constantly back up his claims. It would have been five stars, but it happened too often.

19 people found this helpful

Incomprehensible Garbage

What disappointed you about Lincoln in the Bardo?

Everything.

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

Like an am-dram production by moderately talented students with no director to marshall them: the numerous voices, footnotes and diversions serve only to produce a story which is utterly incomprehensible and completely incoherent. This is the worst audio book I've ever heard.

15 people found this helpful

Not for me

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

I'm not sure why this has received rave reviews - I can only imagine it works better in printed format than audio book. I'm sure its all very clever but it just didn't work for me.

What was most disappointing about George Saunders’s story?

I listen to audio books whilst driving and I found this to be tedious and irritating in equal measures, to the point where I had to pull over to switch off.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

There were so many narrators, many sounding similar and so very many characters . I could not tell you what was going on or who anyone was. Perhaps an American audience would appreciate the characters more, if they are more well known there.

Any additional comments?

I had to give up on it all together around half way through.

12 people found this helpful

I really don't get the point of this book

I found this book disjointed and pointless. I forced myself to finish it, not sure why as it felt like torture.

12 people found this helpful

What an extraordinary ride

A strange, beautiful, funny, moving gem of a novel. It is not a linear narrative but a watercolour painting of voices, snatches of fragmented lives and deaths and a truly original contemplation of what we have that might be eternal. This is not an easy listen or read and might not be for everyone, but I loved it.

10 people found this helpful