George Saunders returns us to an earth where many beings who have passed on are with us, in this instance wandering about the earth with some purpose, perhaps a need to resolve something. They have the power to travel great distances, but some are more skilled than others. They can hear the thoughts of both the dead and the living when within an orb around them. We know that some people have left the earth at death. It is not always clear as the various ethereal beings appear in Vigil why they are still here, but in the case of Jill “Doll” Blaine, born in 1954, died in 1976, she has a need to be more than she was, someone who cares beyond her town, her family, the husband she left a widower. She is now a comforter assigned by God? to be with the dying and help them transition to their next state of being. We learn about her afterlife work and her life on earth as she moves away who she was when she was alive to someplace more elevated.
The novel centers on Jill and a dying man , Kenneth “KJ” Boone. He is an oil tycoon, widely reviled for successfully promoting the continued and even expanded use of fossil fuels. He convincingly acted to debunk climate change without a care for the future of the Earth. Jill is sent to comfort him. He immediately and rudely resists her presence as she enters his mind. He is not speaking or moving, but his mind wanders over his life, sometimes in ways that are more like a nightmare, sometimes very realistically. . KJ is a man whose ego will not allow him to even consider that what he has done in his life and work was anything less than amazing. He does not suffer fools lightly, which means most people and certainly those who disagreed with his literal scorched earth policy. All those idiots who challenged him were overreacting. Very soon, another ethereal being asks to see KJ and leaves him infuriated for reasons that are a little unclear but develop along the way as various ethereal beings pop by to see KJ for various reasons. Jill’s attempts to guide him to more peaceful thoughts are often rebuked or result in his being totally nasty to her. So, KJ. He is a challenge even for Jill, who is quite proud of her record as a comforter.
So, this is not a lovable man. Nor are all the ethereal beings who come to his room or encounter Jill on her KJ breaks likable. But KJ turns out in some ways to be an interesting man and leads us to consider him as a child, becoming the person he is, what he did and what motivated him, where he traveled and how he became so impactful, what it means to be so totally stubborn and what his afterlife might be when he ultimately dies. The novel is completely compelling, marked a lyrical prose that seeds KJ’s and also Jill’s story for us in an uneven line. Bits and pieces come together into a very satisfying whole and presents to us as well a philosophy about life and an afterlife that is original and universal. For the first time in a long time, I could not put a book down.
They Called me Bookworm 