by George Saunders
Hardback, £18.99
The vigil in question is being held for a wealthy elderly man called K J Boone who is dying in what appears to be the present-day United States. Those coming in and out include people from his past – some from his time as a global leader of an oil company.
Our narrator is a young woman, dead for some years, whose job is to console this man as he moves between life and death. But when he sees his life as an unmitigated triumph, and some others see only the harm he has done, what is Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine to do? As Jill says: “I scanned for doubts regarding things he had done or left undone; things he might have said but had not; mistakes to which he had not yet fully admitted, any of which might keep him from attaining that total peace so to be desired at this juncture. And found nothing, or nearly nothing”. (p. 4).
I enjoyed this short novel, with its trademark Saunders humour and incisive if strange way of thinking about responsibility and global disaster. We can forgive Saunders for hanging around in the afterlife again given his Booker success with Lincoln in the Bardo.
A refreshing, enraging, and thoughtful quick read.
Review by Bethan