Abraham Lincoln, A Novel Life

Rating:
Summary: Unique, compassionate telling of Abraham Lincoln's Day Off
Review: This is a very generous story that, by its end, is both too brief in the telling and too large to be consumed in one lifetime (unless you're a person of considerable leisure.). Wolk's Lincoln is a complex, good man: a fish out of water learning to swim in the air of his era's Washington politics and, for a little over one day, of that in 1950's Evanston Illinois. This is, in part, a time-travel story that, wisely, doesn't try to diagram the possible intricacies, collisions, paradoxes, and contradictions of such an action--Wolk does give us Professor Moebius' twisted loop as a simple metaphor, although Lincoln himself, avoids prolonged consideration of that model after his return.

By the end of the story, I felt very attached to Lincoln, to Martha, his wife, and to Joan, his friend and lover in the 20th century. While Lincoln, his wife Mary, his cabinet, the country, are mostly living through the most trying of times, undergoing personal and public tragedies, the writing stays economical and compassionate without being weak or sentimental. Lincoln looks at his trip to the future as a brief reprieve, assumes it was real (there is no, and then I woke up moment, in this story), a gift, and while it changes him, it doesn't distract him from his work, even though while in Evanston he has learned his fate. There is no flag-waving call to duty; just people who struggle with the consequences of their actions but who also have to live.

Wolk is a Shakespearean and a Lincoln scholar, and the Lincoln of this story certainly knows his Shakespeare. Quotes from Henry V in the story provide insights into Lincoln, some veiled, some that may drive you to the play to discover other Henry V passages that apply to Lincoln but do not appear in the book (especially lines where Henry is wooing Kate). There are also veiled references to some of Borge's themes.

There is what some readers may consider an odd epilogue, others perhaps a conceit, with references to science fiction author Philip K. Dick (a simulacra of Lincoln appears in Dick's novel, We Can Build You), references to time travel, the author himself perhaps as scribe or perhaps the possessor of a diary or papers (along with a generous imagination), and a character in the form of Lincoln himself or his descendant. It's a little zany at first, perhaps a little mad, but it fits.

If you read the book and enjoy it (as I did), you may be satisfied with a single reading--however, there's more story between the lines, existing in histories, other stories, plays, and references, and perhaps within yourself, that will probably drive you to other sources (as it did me). If you enjoy books that inspire you to look elsewhere (I do), then you'll probably like this one. You may enjoy this book if you like alternate history (I usually don't), or if you enjoy literary historical fiction like Patrick O'Brian's (I do). I read Lincoln, A Novel Life, while rereading O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series for the second time (and found them compatible pleasures). I wish Wolk had provided O'Brian's depth, even if he left things unexplained, but I'm happy to have been given the story I read, just the same. Wolk's Lincoln feels true. In good fiction, that counts more than anything else.

Note: This book may drive you to learn more about Lincoln and his times. Wolk generously helps with a large appendix containing non-fictional historical notes and references.