I recently re-discovered Goodreads - mostly as a place to record books I'm interested in reading "sometime" (though I fear the list may become unwieldy if I maintain it) - and a recent article of "novels with unconditional narrative structure" added quite a few to the list.
This was one of them; told as a combinations of narratives by ghosts in a graveyard (who often would narrate what the other member of a conversation was saying... it got too confusing if you tried to pay too much attention to who was saying what!) and as a collection of clippings from either newspapers or other forms of media available at the time.
The setting is the death of Abraham Lincoln's son William after a sickness, and his father's immense grief over losing his boy. The characters in the cemetery are all individuals who believe their condition to be temporary... calling their coffins / graves "sick boxes" and fully expecting to be healed of their "conditions" and be reunited with their families. But apparently children are not meant for this world, and if they do no "move on" quickly enough, they are soon overtaken by other souls with fates worse than those inhabiting the cemetery at night. As several residents attempt to persuade first young William to move on and then, though possession / suggestion / influence, his father to encourage him and let him go, many realize they, themselves are dead - have been dead for decades in some cases - and eventually move on to the, well, afterlife, I guess?
I was an interesting construct, and certainly there were somewhat humorous times, but overall, I did't particularly enjoy the book.
06/16/2022 // F // Kindle