Reviews
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.', 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., Not only the best novel about President Lincoln since Gore Vidal's Lincoln in 1984, but it is also twice as good to read., 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., I Am Abraham is not only the best novel about President Lincoln since Gore Vidal's Lincoln in 1984, but it is also twice as good to read., 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., 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., 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., 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., Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer--so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible., 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., 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., 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.
