Vigil
By George Saunders
Literary Fiction
Random House
January 2026
A being zooms down into a rich Dallas neighborhood, landing head first in the dirt. Her clothes gradually appear. Her form takes shape. She pops out of the ground and heads off to work.
She is a semi-angelic spirit with a mission to comfort the dying, and she is embarking on her most challenging assignment in George Saunders’s Vigil. The spirit, formerly Jill “Doll” Blaine, is comforted by being able to comfort those in their final moments. But her assignment this time is a doozy.
She is at the bedside of a dying oil executive, a combination of every Gilded Age robber baron with elements of Dick Cheney and other modern moguls thrown in. Her charge grew up short and poor in Wyoming. But he worked his way up the ranks until he was running a huge corporation.
A steady flow of satisfaction, even triumph, coursed through him, regarding all he had managed to do, see, cause, and create, specially given his humble origins.
I scanned for doubts ... And found nothing, or nearly nothing.
Comfort is the last thing he wants. K.J. Boone ruled the world and he wants the world to take note of that. He is proud of all he accomplished. He still sounds like the short little boy who was teased by classmates and scolded by his hard-scrabble, hard-working farmer father.
Other spirits visit K.J. as well, especially that of a Frenchman who invented the combustible engine. He holds himself and Boone responsible for global warming. Boone’s father reminds him of a speech he gave that became the gold standard in denying climate science.
K.J. won’t admit to himself that he is responsible for many deaths, including possibly the planet.
But Jill doesn’t give up easily. She died very young, without having done much except be a happily married newlywed. Giving comfort to the dying and developing her sense of empathy, of understand people even if she doesn’t feel the need to admire them, gives her a sense of purpose she didn’t have while living.
The premise seems to be a story about K.J. and whether he will be redeemed before he dies. But it’s really about his assigned visitor. Although K.J. and his other visitors provide her with challenges, the spirit formerly known as Jill realizes that even in her present manifestation, she can grow.
Saunders presents two philosophies of life that appear opposed. The comforter realized some time ago that people can’t help who they are or how they feel. They didn’t ask for their stations in life or their temperaments. When things happen to them, they can only respond with what they are made of.
Knowing this has been a source of comfort to the being formerly known as Jill before. But it hasn’t helped this time. Until she comes to a new realization at the end of this short novel.
The idea that even beyond death, beyond a corporeal body, a soul can continue to learn and grow, is an empathetic notion that can provide solace. An inevitable occurrence, part of her guiding philosophy, is not necessary negative.