At the heart of Vigil, George Saunders’s slim second novel, lies a conceit. It is the final night in the life of KJ Boone, an octogenarian oil magnate whose business empire was built on climate denial, political lobbying and the plunder of ecological commons.Into this setting drifts Jill “Doll” Blaine, an afterlife agent charged with easing souls across the threshold. Part death doula, part cosmic bureaucrat, Blaine is an expert at this. She had died at 22 herself, in a car bomb explosion meant for her policeman husband. Since then, she has shepherded well over 300 people to the other side. Boone, however, presents a particular challenge: how does one soothe a man whose life’s work has contributed to planetary harm on a staggering scale and who has no regrets about it?Unfolding over a single night and structured like a metaphysical debate, this sets the stage for the reckoning. Jill believes in mercy. Others in the spirit world disagree. A French engineer, undone by an industrial disaster traceable to Boone’s empire, presses for confrontation. He is joined by a plethora of spectral creatures demanding accountability. But no moral epiphany awaits Boone.On his deathbed, he remains intransigent — oh the audacity of those “libdopes” to try to pull him down — free of compunction and supremely secure in his self-importance. “A steady flow of satisfaction, even triumph, coursed through him, regarding all he had managed to see, cause and create.” Vigil asks instead, what if some harms cannot be catalysed into wisdom? What if death offers no absolution? What if our craving for redemption is itself a kind of vanity?A new American novel The 2017 Man Booker Prize was won by George Saunders for his polyphonic Lincoln in the the Bardo. (Source: Agencies, File Photo)These are urgent, incisive questions. Vigil is an American novel distinctly conscious of its inheritance. Amid heightened climate crisis, the US has dismantled domestic climate action efforts, including doing away with the 2009 EPA “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases, withdrawing support for renewable energy technologies, and pausing Inflation Reduction Act funds. It has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, calling global warming a hoax. This is a world Boone would fit effortlessly in and it gives Saunders a necessary in into the big moral dilemmas of the time.And yet, the book feels somewhat contrived. It settles on the right issues, asks the right questions, reaches for the right answers. But it tries a bit too hard. Saunders’s satire, honed over decades of examining the human capacity for self-delusion, has lost none of its bite.It saves the novel from becoming sanctimonious but only just, and that’s a shame. Vigil feels somehow diminished beside its predecessor, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), Saunders’s Booker Prize-winning novel. A choral meditation on grief, Lincoln in the Bardo had rendered the liminal space between life and death both anarchic and tender. Vigil’s tone is more prosecutorial, as if it wishes to strip the afterlife of its consolations and examine what moral residue remains. It revisits the metaphysical waiting room but this time the question it asks is whether we deserve to be comforted at all.Story continues below this adNo redemptionIt is a question that Jill, too, grapples with. In her, the author locates the fragile persistence of care in an otherwise transactional world. Fussy, kind, faintly bewildered, Jill is a marvellous creation, providing the book its emotional ballast. She offsets Boone, whose obduracy means the novel’s dramatic engine refuses to fully kickstart. Saunders’s refusal to grant him redemption is ethically bracing but narratively static. Conflict requires movement and Vigil ends up circling its central dilemma without deepening it.In his 2013 commencement speech, ‘Failures of Kindness’, at Syracuse University, Saunders spoke of the things that make life worthwhile — kindness, empathy, curiosity: “Do those things that incline you toward the big questions and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial”.These are the qualities that have animated Saunders’s own work and Vigil is no exception. It is, by turns, comic, uncanny and tender, with passages of bruising beauty. Yet, it can also feel frustratingly distant. For all its ingenuity, Vigil never quite summons the emotional momentum that animates Saunders’s earlier triumphs.Paromita Chakrabarti is Senior Associate Editor at the The Indian Express. She is a key member of the National Editorial and Opinion desk and writes on books and literature, gender discourse, workplace policies and contemporary socio-cultural trends. Professional Profile With a career spanning over 20 years, her work is characterized by a "deep culture" approach—examining how literature, gender, and social policy intersect with contemporary life. Specialization: Books and publishing, gender discourse (specifically workplace dynamics), and modern socio-cultural trends. Editorial Role: She curates the literary coverage for the paper, overseeing reviews, author profiles, and long-form features on global literary awards. Recent Notable Articles (Late 2025) Her recent writing highlights a blend of literary expertise and sharp social commentary: 1. Literary Coverage & Nobel/Booker Awards "2025 Nobel Prize in Literature | Hungarian master of apocalypse" (Oct 10, 2025): An in-depth analysis of László Krasznahorkai’s win, exploring his themes of despair and grace. "Everything you need to know about the Booker Prize 2025" (Nov 10, 2025): A comprehensive guide to the history and top contenders of the year. "Katie Kitamura's Audition turns life into a stage" (Nov 8, 2025): A review of the novel’s exploration of self-recognition and performance. 2. Gender & Workplace Policy "Karnataka’s menstrual leave policy: The problem isn’t periods. It’s that workplaces are built for men" (Oct 13, 2025): A viral opinion piece arguing that modern workplace patterns are calibrated to male biology, making women's rights feel like "concessions." "Best of Both Sides: For women’s cricket, it’s 1978, not 1983" (Nov 7, 2025): A piece on how the yardstick of men's cricket cannot accurately measure the revolution in the women's game. 3. Social Trends & Childhood Crisis "The kids are not alright: An unprecedented crisis is brewing in schools and homes" (Nov 23, 2025): Writing as the Opinions Editor, she analyzed how rising competition and digital overload are overwhelming children. 4. Author Interviews & Profiles "Fame is another kind of loneliness: Kiran Desai on her Booker-shortlisted novel" (Sept 23, 2025): An interview regarding The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. "Once you’ve had a rocky and unsafe childhood, you can’t trust safety: Arundhati Roy" (Aug 30, 2025): A profile on Roy’s recent reflections on personal and political violence. Signature Beats Gender Lens: She frequently critiques the "borrowed terms" on which women navigate pregnancy, menstruation, and caregiving in the corporate world. Book Reviews: Her reviews often draw parallels between literature and other media, such as comparing Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune to the series Only Murders in the Building (Oct 25, 2025). ... Read More © IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd