This review contains spoilers.
In his latest book “Vigil,” Booker Prize and National Book Award-winning author George Saunders crafts an emotionally charged narrative of sympathy, suffering, healing and liberation.
Saunders’ latest novel debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Sellers list after hitting shelves Jan. 27. In “Vigil,” Saunders explores several political themes, from corporate greed to the legacy of environmental destruction.
Set in a liminal space between the living world and the afterlife, “Vigil” chronicles the final evening of the once-powerful oil tycoon K.J. Boone, a complicated and stubborn man who refuses to be schooled on the worldly consequences of his career.
The story is told from the perspective of protagonist Jill Blaine, a spirit tasked with comforting the dying in their final moments. Since her own death, Jill has completed her duty 343 times and considers her encounters to be, more or less, routine.
However, she finds K.J. to be a particularly difficult case. Aside from the fact that the oil executive is an arrogant, self-entitled antagonist, other spirits begin to infiltrate Jill’s job, imposing their own moral visions of death and repentance onto the situation.
As in his previous novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” which won the 2017 Booker Prize, Saunders imagines death not as a serene departure from life, but as a chaotic reckoning with life’s unresolved questions and contradictions. His use of the liminal world as a landscape for confronting K.J’s unethical actions is perhaps one of the most compelling parts of the novel.
K.J., who has spent his life spreading false narratives about climate change and ravaging natural habitats for his own profit, believes his work was ultimately good, which fundamentally contradicts the moral standards of Jill’s world and, assumedly, most of Saunders’ audience.
While he initially comes across as a villainous caricature of the modern-day CEO, we later come to understand the dying tycoon as a man whose actions were fueled by familiar notions of love, pride, ambition and survival. In fact, his entire career hinged on the idea that the world needed oil to continue existing.
Driven by an unwavering desire to rise from his impoverished childhood and secure a place in the world for his family, K.J. moved through life championing a sense of urgency to achieve and live grandly — arguably, a perspective that is universally sympathizable.
He is unwilling to atone for his actions, in part, because he believes he has nothing to regret. And, as Jill eventually considers, perhaps it is too great an ask to convince K.J. that his soul must be subject to some act of retribution or salvation.
But the story doesn’t function solely to elicit sympathy for a morally wicked man. It instead asks us to reconsider how we spend our final moments and what we make of the accomplishments that will outlast us.
At the very heart of the novel is a question of purpose in both life and death: If a good life is achieved through unethical means, must we pay the price in death? Do the ends justify the means when it comes to the legacy we leave behind not only for our loved ones but also other people?
Saunders engages with these questions deftly, underscoring the human capacity for immense love and harm. As Jill’s understanding of K.J. transforms, so too does our concept of the human condition.
While the story doesn’t project a singular political message, as was intended by the author, it meaningfully interrogates the responsibility of corporations in preserving the environment for future generations and the ways in which such organizations operate on a framework of exploitation.
“Vigil” is a powerful case study on one man’s life that doesn’t necessarily set out to justify the environmental harm he caused. Rather, to expand our understanding of the desires that fuel those in power.
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