This new piece of fiction by George Saunders is marketed as a novel, but it is shorter than most novels and it reads more like a novella – or a short story that got out of control. And that’s a good thing. Saunders is a master of the short story. I always look forward to his collections, of which I have read and enjoyed several, including Liberation Day: Stories, Pastoralia: Stories and a Novella, and Tenth of December: Stories, not to mention the brilliant master class on short Russian fiction A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.

Vigil takes place in a single night. A spirit named Jill Blaine, the narrator of the tale, is sent to Earth, to Dallas, Texas, to comfort a dying billionaire, K.J. Boone, who made his fortune in oil. Although the world is manifesting the extreme effects of global warming, Boone is unrepentant despite his aggressive business tactics contributing in a significant way to the current disasters. It is not Blaine’s purpose to castigate or punish Boone, but rather to make his transition to the next stage easier. In fact, she empathizes with his plight and is able to see things from his viewpoint. She says: “My charge had been born him. But had never chosen to be born him. That just happened to him.” And of his multifarious business misdeeds: “It did not seem strange to me but inevitable. An inevitable occurrence upon which it would be ludicrous to pass judgment.” But numerous spirits that seem trapped in a limbo-like state between life and death do appear and pass judgment. They arrive, sometimes one by one and sometimes in groups to confront Boone (who in his coma-like state can mentally communicate with them) with what they consider his grievous sins.

More than once, Blaine gets fed up with Boone’s recalcitrance and leaves; she even makes a trip to her hometown, several states away, where she died as a young woman of twenty-two. However, it seems injurious in a sense for spirits like her to delve too deeply into their pasts; it distracts her from her current assignment.

The main theme of Vigil is environmental degradation caused by corrupt business practices, but the sermonizing is expertly cloaked by the entertaining fantasy. The underworld of ghosts in various stages of the afterlife reminded me of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Even more, though, it reminded me of the novella An Earth Day Eulogy by my son Nestor Walters, published in 2024, in which various spirits castigate the main character on Earth Day for his indifference to environmental issues.

At first I found Vigil a bit befuddling. You have to give it some time so that you become accustomed to the ground rules of the afterlife Saunders is presenting. But if you persevere past the initial confusion, you soon get into the flow of things and it becomes a lot of fun. Saunders, in this seemingly light fantasy replete with all sorts of idiosyncratic characters, cloaks a powerful message of the class differences in America and the obliviousness and callousness of the upper class to the damage they are causing to the rest of humankind. What could be better? You get a fun fantasy and a moral tale in a succinct, easy to absorb story. Highly recommended.