Vigil: A Novel

ISBN: 0525509623

Author: Saunders, George

Condition: New

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A scorching portrait of modern America. And yet it also brings a sense of sense of hope, not only because [it] reminds us how powerful a great novel can be, but because of the sense . . . that a universal justice will prevail.-R. J. Palacio for Time, 25 Books That Capture This American MomentA spectacular (Los Angeles Times) novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, taking place at the bedside of an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world into the nextVibrant, fiendishly clever . . . Vigil is pure Saunders: the death of empathy, he insists, is greatly exaggerated.-The Boston GlobeNot for the first time, Jill Doll Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isnt like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isnt it?Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying mans room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boones postdeath future.With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination weve come to expect, 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.