Since the buzz around this book really seems centered around the audio version, and I could listen to Nick Offerman read the phone book, I went that route. Thank goodness, because now that I've finished it... I would say that the phone book might have been as stimulating to me. Is it a novel? Is it a play? Is it an annotated history book with some maudlin storytelling thrown in? Is it esoteric poetry for Civil War enthusiasts? I paged through the print version at the library the other day and I'm glad I listened to it, because the way it is written is rather like a screenplay and there are over 164 characters. There's no way I would have picked it up. Or if I had, I wouldn't have finished it, as I did with the audio. The dramatization of the (164!) characters helped me keep them straight, to a degree. There is a great deal of quoted material, and it felt like pages upon pages of a boring history book, with all sorts of completely useless bits: the conflicting weather reports on the day of the party at the Lincoln home, the weather the day of Willy's funeral, the color of Lincoln's eyes (how many ways can people say grey-brown? A LOT.), commentary on Lincoln's appearance (so many ways to convey: ugly) and his demeanor (which belied said ugliness). There were so many pages dedicated to outside sources, I wonder what would have been left standing of this novel without them. As for the fiction, it felt meandering and lacked any kind of real plot or urgency until the very end, which was indeed poignant and captivating. I concede that I also loved the character development of Bevans and Vollman, as well as the thought provoking way in which the dead affected Lincoln. Yet none of this was enough for me to actually like the book overall. If atmospheric, introspective and cerebral are your jam? This is the book for you! For a lovely, haunting and ENGAGING novel about the afterlife, I would recommend The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier.
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