Item: Vigil
Rating: 2
Author: Catherine

Vigil by George Saunders
Published by Random House
Publication date: January 27, 2026
Genres: Fiction, Literary

In Vigil by George Saunders Jill is an angel who helps the dying transition into death. Her latest assignment is K.J. Boone, a Texan oilman. Jill’s purpose is to comfort but also to give the person an opportunity to repent, but Boone wants none of that. He has nothing to be sorry for and is proud of all of his life achievements. On his final night, Jill arrives to help him, but in the long hours of his passing they are continuously interrupted by ghosts from Boone’s life all of whom have something to say.

Saunders has an extraordinarily fertile imagination. He takes elements firmly rooted in reality to spin fantastical stories around complex themes. In this case, it’s an oil tycoon who is a reprehensible, vile human being with no interest into the insight of his own actions because there is nothing inside insight. He wanted to be rich. Obscenely rich, and if it came at the cost of destroying the environment and lying to people, he could find his way to rationalize around it. Boone is a vile human being and so every bit of his past that comes forward is deeply offensive and ugly. And that ugliness ripples out to Jill and the life she once had, impacting her status as an elevated being.

More importantly, impacting me as a reader. 192 pages replaying the horrible life of a horrendous person without a single redeeming quality. I didn’t like or care about a single person in this novel. Add to that the dystopian descriptions of what his greed wrought around the world and there’s just no way not to hope he’s going straight to hell. Instead, Saunders’s waffles, dancing between judgment and a philosophical belief that judgment is not possible when a person is only being exactly what they were. It may start as some grand exercise and philosophy, but it ends up feeling self-indulgent on the part of Saunders. Yes, he has the creative bandwidth to explore the furthest reaches of the concept of judgment, but the ping-ponging back and forth through every conceivable argument relating to God, redemption, and grace is exhausting. If you’re inclined to playing devil’s advocate and don’t have any emotional attachments to fiction this is the book for you. If it sounds confusing, join the club because that’s exactly where Vigil left me. Depressed and confused.

For as much as I disliked this book, I loved Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo—soon to be a movie with Tom Hanks

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