★ 10/28/2013
"If all historians—or any historian—could write with the magnetic charm and authoritative verve of Jerome Charyn, American readers would be fighting over the privilege of learning about their past. They can learn much from this book—an audacious, first-person novel that makes Lincoln the most irresistible figure of a compelling story singed with equal doses of comedy, tragedy, and moral grandeur. Here is something beyond history and approaching art."
"Jerome Charyn is merely one of our finest writers with a polymorphous imagination and crack comic timing. Whatever milieu he chooses to inhabit, his characters sizzle with life, and his sentences are pure vernacular music, his voice unmistakable."
"In the vast literature of Lincolniana, an honorable… place will be made for it, a considerably more inviting one than that occupied since 1984 by Gore Vidal’s ponderous, self-important Lincoln ."
The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley
"Jerome Charyn [is] a fearless writer… Brave and brazen… The book is daringly imagined, written with exuberance, and with a remarkable command of historical detail. It gives us a human Lincoln besieged by vividly drawn enemies and allies… Placing Lincoln within the web ordinary and sometimes petty human relations is no small achievement."
New York Review of Books - Andrew Delbanco
"One of our most intriguing fiction writers takes on the story of Honest Abe, narrating the tale in Lincoln’s voice and offering a revealing portrait of a man as flawed as he was great."
O, The Oprah Magazine - Abbe Wright
"Thoughtful, observant and droll."
"Charyn faces the daunting task of fictionalizing the life of an American icon, but does so with aplomb. …By employing a first-person narrative, he is able to inject Lincoln’s inimitable intelligence, wit, and compassion into every page, as his homespun humor is underscored with his trademark pathos and humanity…. The legend of Lincoln continues to fascinate, and this compulsively readable fictional autobiography approaches the man and the myth from a fresh new angle."
Booklist - Margaret Flanagan
"Jerome Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature."
"Not only the best novel about President Lincoln since Gore Vidal’s Lincoln in 1984, but it is also twice as good to read."
"Daring… Memorable… Charyn’s richly textured portrait captures the pragmatism, cunning, despair, and moral strength of a man who could have empathy for his bitterest foes, and who ‘had never outgrown the forest and a dirt floor.’"
"Audacious as ever, Jerome Charyn now casts his novelist’s gimlet eye on sad-souled Abraham Lincoln, a man of many parts, who controls events and people—wife, sons, a splintering nation—even though they often are, as they must be, beyond his compassion or power. Brooding, dreamlike, resonant, and studded with strutting characters, I Am Abraham is as wide and deep and morally sure as its wonderful subjects."
"Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer—so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible."
"Jerome Charyn, like Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s superb 2012 movie, manages a feat of ventriloquism to be admired… Most of all, Lincoln comes across as human and not some remote giant… With that, Jerome Charyn has given Lincoln a most appropriate present for what would have been his 205th birthday this month: rebirth not as a marble memorial but as a three-dimensional human who overcame much to save his nation."
Christian Science Monitor - Erik Spanberg
"The novel...succeeds in making the legendary figure more accessible, using Lincoln's lifelong battle with depression as an avenue through which to explore his life and perspective... A warts-and-all portrayal, not only of the lead, but of central supporting figures, most especially his tempestuous and difficult wife, Mary. Charyn has managed to craft a fictional autobiography that rings emotionally true." - Publishers Weekly
12/01/2013
This historical novel may challenge the listener’s notions of Lincoln as the somber, wise statesman. Written entirely from a first-person perspective, the audiobook relies heavily on Arthur Morey’s interpretation of the imaginative narrative. Even in his early days as a traveling Illinois lawyer with designs on the prettiest belle in Kentucky, Morey’s Lincoln is both crass and witty. Morey’s steadfast pace throughout the almost lyrical account of Lincoln’s presidential campaign provides a sense of Lincoln’s mule-like commitment to integrity. Especially touching is the undercurrent of cynicism and melancholy that Lincoln tries to overcome, particularly during the Civil War years. Morey allows us to glimpse the Lincoln family’s horrifying mental illnesses without pity, as we imagine the president himself would have done. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
2013-11-17Johnny One-Eye , 2008, etc.) has Abraham Lincoln narrating his own story, beginning a few moments before the assassination and then telling the highlights of his life through a series of flashbacks. Lincoln is presented here literally warts and all, from his rough-and-tumble upbringing to his early career as a lawyer and Illinois state legislator to the burden of being president. His first serious relationship is with Ann Rutledge, with whom Lincoln is very much in love (though Charyn endows him with a 21st-century sexual consciousness that at times seems rather jarring). After Ann's death, Lincoln develops a case of the "blue unholies," a melancholy that haunts him for much of the rest of his life. He next takes up with the vivacious and demanding Mary Todd, who comes across as more of a burden than a helpmeet, especially when they get to the White House, where she is unadmiringly styled the "Lady President." Mary is preoccupied with redecorating, flirting and, later, with deeply grieving the loss of her son, Willie. The portrait of Lincoln readers get is characterized by emotional and psychological complexity, for he's a reluctant candidate, a caustic commander in chief and, at times (understandably), a diffident husband. He, too, is deeply saddened by the death of his son as well as by the deep social divisions he seems unable to bridge. Charyn skillfully weaves bits of speeches and a large cast of characters, most of them drawn from Lincoln's life, into his intricate portrait of the 16th president.
