A Friend of Mr Lincoln review – the peril of capturing a president

Written by Stephen Harrigan, the historical novel about young Abraham Lincoln grapples with an uneasy hybrid of fact and fiction

If you’re not au fait with the world of Lincoln biographies, you’ll find a man you never knew in Stephen Harrigan’s novel A Friend of Mr Lincoln. Here he’s neither the teenage railsplitter nor the late-life emancipator but the scrabbling Springfield lawyer and ambitious local politician of the 1830s and 1840s.

This young Abe Lincoln tells obscene stories and writes sentimental poetry, perpetrates anonymous character assassination in the local paper and nearly fights an unlawful duel. He visits prostitutes and twice considers killing himself over a woman. He has sex with Mary Todd before he marries her in a rush and supports returning African Americans to Africa before representing a Kentucky plantation owner who wants his slaves returned from Illinois.

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