Title: Vigil by George Saunders
Book Beginnings/First Line Friday quote:
What a lovely home I found myself plummeting toward, acquiring, as I fell, arms, hands, feet, all of which, as usual, became more substantial with each passing second.
Friday56 quote:
“You seem different, he said.
I am different, I said. I'm Jill. Jill Blaine. Jill 'Doll' Blaine.
Weren't you always? he said.
Not this much, I said.”
Summary: Jill "Doll" Blaine is a celestial helper. She is sent to comfort people in their last moments of life and to help them make the transition to the afterlife. Her charge, K.J. Boone, refuses to be consoled, however, because he did nothing to regret. Or so he thinks. Visitors alive and not alive parade through his room begging to differ.
Review: George Saunders is one of my favorite authors, at least half of the time. I loved his books Lincoln in the Bardo and A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, but I am not a fan of his short story collection Tenth of December, which I disliked so much I threw the book away. (I know. Scandalous.) Therefore, I approached Vigil with a bit of trepidation. Which side of the scale would this book fall on? I happily report is on the positive side.
In a lot of ways Vigil reminded me of Lincoln in the Bardo, or the audiobook production was very similar. Like Lincoln in the Bardo, Vigil had several narrators, not just one person reading all the parts in the story. Lincoln used 166 different voice actors while Vigil used 14 but it still was very impactful. Like in the first book, life in that liminal space between life and death (also known as the bardo) is explored in Vigil. Some people (ghosts) get stuck or held fast by some unresolved aspect on earth while others pass on easily. Jill "Doll" Blaine is sent to make that transition easier.
But K.J. Boone is no easy charge. While others come to confront/condemn him for the choices he made during his lifetime which are now impacting everyone, he is defiant to the end. The publisher sums of Vigil this way: "George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution."
Vigil had a lot to say in very few pages, 192, and I rated it with 4 stars.
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