Not long into George Saunders’s Vigil (Random House 2026), I remarked that it was a bit Charles Dickens meets Tom Stoppard – to be more exact, it’s A Christmas Carol meets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with a strong nod to the Stoppard play. You would think that those echoes would be enough to have me LOVING this novel, but alas, I really didn’t enjoy it that much. But I know why – the voice of Jill “Doll” Blaine annoyed the crap out of me. Had she died younger, I could get on board with some of it. Don’t get me wrong, 22 isn’t old by any means, and some of that naiveté born of lack of experience works extremely well juxtaposed with her experiences as a “ghost” who has watched the world “grow up” around her. But her childishness was off-putting, especially in word choice. I nearly expected a 6-7 joke to show up. (Also, I hope to never see “butthurt” in a book again.) At times, Jill also spoke like someone who lived in the gangster era of the US, not the peace, love, harmony era of the early 1970s. Some of the inconsistencies in voice are intended and make sense based on the plot and her experiences, others just seem sloppy as if there was some back and forth about when Jill should have been alive.
As for the novel, a Texas oil tycoon is on his death bed and Jill comes to his side to bring him comfort as he crosses. Only he doesn’t want comfort. And he sure as shit isn’t remorseful for all the harm he’s done. Others of “her ilk” join Jill, including a Frenchman who created the engine and is hellbent on making Jill’s charge see the “light” and repent before he dies. The nod to the Stoppard play comes in with two other ghosts who used to work for the tycoon referred to primarily as R and G.
My favorite scene involves other ghosts who have nothing to do with the tycoon and are all just hanging out where they died. They died at different times and in different ways, but they’re all hanging out together. It reminds me a bit of the sitcom “Ghosts.”
This is my first Saunders, and I am underwhelmed enough to likely not seek out his backlog. His Booker win came during my so-called “literary dark days” so it just passed me by, and I really don’t think I’ll loop back to it. As for Vigil, I wish the entire novel had been like the last third, which was remarkably more enjoyable the first two thirds.
Should you read it?
Eh. It’s short. It is funny. It is well-written in many ways. I just found parts of it rather off-putting, making it not that enjoyable for me. Maybe my expectations were too high.
A Girl Named Tommi 