Vigil by George Saunders
A woman falls from the sky and crashes, face-first, into the earth. She finds herself at the mansion of a dying oil magnate, and is charged with easing his journey towards death. Her job is to alleviate the existential suffering— the doubts, regrets, uncertainties— of the dying. She is good at what she does. She is dead herself, after all, and has done this hundreds of times. But this particular assignment becomes rather chaotic: a Frenchman keeps derailing her, intent on demonstrating the errors of the magnate’s ways and the consequences of his enterprise, and he isn’t the only one; strange, unruly visitors with their own agendas keep interrupting, besides the fact that the magnate himself is a stubborn, crotchety old man with no doubts, regrets, or uncertainties to alleviate. As the woman is continuously obstructed, she begins to remember who she was “before”, something people of her ilk must avoid at all costs.
I had such a fun time reading this, and devoured it in one sitting. It is a short novel, at about 175 pages, and it was just right (although I didn't want it to end). The story meanders, as it is in no rush to get where its going, but it is never boring, never dull, and always clever.
Reminiscent of A Christmas Carol, Vigil feels part parable, part treatise. George Saunders, with his Vonnegut-esque humanism and compassionate satire, is so funny. Vigil is filled with Saunders-isms: the use and disuse of quotation marks, parenthesis, the witty voice. Saunders is “your favorite writer’s favorite writer,” and what I love about him is that his writing never feels drunk on itself. He has managed a consistent voice over a long career, never capitulating to the ego of it all. If you are a lover of craft writing, absurdity, and humor, this book is for you.