BookBrowse Reviews Vigil by George Saunders

BookBrowse:

Vigil follows a ghost guiding an oil tycoon through death, blending lyricism, sharp satire, and dark humor to create a thought-provoking and highly engaging story about death and morality.

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George Saunders, author and creative writing professor at Syracuse University, is best recognized for his distinctive and empathetic stories. He has written many short stories, novellas, and nonfiction books, while his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, won multiple awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship and the Man Booker Prize. In his second novel, Vigil, he revisits the liminal space between life and death, exploring familiar themes like mortality, morality, and compassion, with his usual mix of lyricism, kindness, dark humor, and absurdist satire.

Vigil is set across a single night as KJ Boone, the CEO of a large oil company, lies on his deathbed. The main character and narrator is Jill "Doll" Blaine, one of the "elevated" who, after death, are tasked with helping the dying cross over to the afterlife. Jill was killed in an act of violence when she was just 22 years old. Since then, she has been helping the dying transition by listening to their stories and offering them comfort. She is compassionate, kind, and an advocate of forgiveness, even with her 344th case, the powerful oil tycoon who will not admit the wrongs he has committed against the world. Boone is stubborn, crude, and condescending. His life has been one of greed and pride, causing environmental disasters and pain to many. While Jill is trying to comfort him and get him to turn his life around and atone, a myriad of ghosts, creatures, and people from Boone's past appear, most often to shame him. Despite its Dickensian flair and resemblance to A Christmas Carol, Vigil does not follow a traditional redemptive arc.

Both main characters are well-developed, even if at times they border on cliché. Take Boone, for example. The man had a tough childhood, growing up poor and struggling his way to wealth and power. His current evil and selfishness are to be understood through the lens of his past, a qualifier that serves a sort of redemptive purpose. This is a trope that I have seen countless times before and it doesn't do much to bolster Boone's case. The most intriguing character by far is Jill, who, throughout the novel, is bound by contradictions. She sees visions of her former life, and struggles to cope with her death and all she has lost; her physical appearance and emotional world are both ordinary, yet she has access to all knowledge and the ability to travel through time and matter. She comes across as both powerful and lost. All in all, the author develops a compelling, layered character in her. The supporting characters add an interesting contrast to the novel's moral lessons, such as a French ghost, who, unlike Jill, wants to confront Boone with all he has done and make him suffer for it.

Despite its short length (fewer than 200 pages), Vigil deals with several questions successfully, although not as in-depth as I would have liked. One of the major questions that it raises pertains to environmentalism and the role large corporations play in the climate crisis. Through Boone, Saunders criticizes climate change deniers and posits that oil companies contribute nothing but harm in the name of profit. Boone's situation also suggests that the owners of these companies should be held accountable for the damage they are causing. Contrary to this, Boone himself denies or downplays these harms. He notes that the same technologies that damage the environment have also made our lives easier and, in some cases, even saved lives, via the advances of medical equipment and ambulances, for example. This is an interesting take, but it is left mostly unexplored beyond a passing mention. Another major theme includes forgiveness, comfort, and compassion—more specifically, the question of whether everyone deserves them. Jill's answer is "yes," while others, like the ghost from France, believe that people like Boone deserve nothing but punishment. Other themes include memory, and what it is to be human, explored mainly through Jill's inability to reconcile her memories of being alive with her current state.

As far as the prose goes, it is consistent with the previous writing of Saunders in that Vigil retains the same level of musicality and lyricism without losing the conversational style or satirical elements. One of the most impressive aspects, and one I found working fantastically, is Saunders' adaptation of voice and style. When the story moves to the victims of Boone's eco-crimes, the prose sheds its lyricism and instead becomes much simpler, acting as a reflection of the plain horror of what's being described. These blunt descriptions clarify the book's message while delivering a powerful emotional impact.

This review first ran in the May 6, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.