From nothingness, there arose great love; now, its source nullified, that love, searching and sick, converts to the most abysmal suffering imaginable.

Most of what I take from this book was the sense of tragedy of losing a child. The novel takes place during a single night in the Cemetery where Willie Lincoln was entombed and a fair bit is Abraham Lincoln working, in his mind, through the tragedy that has crippled him emotionally during his Presidency in 1862. It begins with the introspection of loss and slowly morphs into a not-quite-explicit but a reflective, humanist recognition of suffering outside his own. Yes it's character development overcoming loss. Even more so, considering the historical timing and attitude, the story suggests this event might have been a pivotal mark in Lincoln's turn to Emancipation and an evolution in how the North would fight the Civil War.

Apart from Abraham Lincoln there's a fair bit of characterization of Willie and the other "souls" or ghosts waiting for, quite literally anything but death. Each has their own struggle and reason for existing halfway between Earth and Eternity. It's weird. Saunders is a bit weird.

Speaking of weirdness, the narrative is often centered around accounts from different people and perspectives on identical events. It's like Saunders is pulling accounts of events from different sources to tell the story. I can understand disliking the form. However there's a certain humor when multiple accounts of the same event differ in seemingly minor details, leading the reader to wonder if one or any source can be trusted. There are also similar times when opinion is offered on people and events that varies wildly (like from approval to disgust). Again, it makes me question which source to align with on narrative details but also does the job of telling a well-rounded account of an event from the perspective of many rather than just one.