When George Saunders' first novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” came out in 2017 I instantly fell in love with it and was thrilled to see it win that year's Booker Prize. So I've been highly anticipating this new book and it was a thrill to interview him about “Vigil” in London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xyuMp5X7uM It's impressive that Saunders has such a towering literary reputation given this is only his second novel though, of course, he's also published multiple acclaimed short story collections and non-fiction as well as being very active in the reading community with different organisations and his 'Story Club' substack.

I found it somewhat surprising at first that, like his previous novel, “Vigil” follows a similar format where the narrative treads between the living and the very chatty dead. In addition to the dying protagonist/wealthy oil man KJ Boone, we're introduced to many idiosyncratic (and sometimes flatulent) individuals caught in a realm like the bardo, a state between living and rebirth that comes from Tibetan Buddhism. There are references to how these figures aren't ready to “move on” yet because of some unfinished Earthly business. However, the heroine of this novel Jill 'Doll' Blaine is in a state of “elevation” where she continuously returns to Earth to comfort those who are passing. I enjoyed the creativity, inventiveness and humour of how Saunders describes the way in which the dead act. But I'm aware that this sort of action can quickly slide into the puerile and feel flippant. I felt Saunders mostly kept to the right side of this as I was consistently entertained and surprised by the ghosts' actions. There's also a tragi-comic element to all the ghosts encountered as many are caught up in their own obsessions and unable to break free or find peace. To be caught in such an egotistical loop is its own kind of hell!

It feels timely that this novel focuses on a businessman whose decisions and unconscionable actions have led to so many painful deaths and the destruction of the environment. I'm sure many people are frustrated that a small group of powerful elite in this world find ways to work around the law and use their influence purely to enhance their personal wealth/status to such ridiculous proportions. So I'm sympathetic with this novel's central drive to hold such a man to account and confront him with the destructive effects of his decisions by surrounding him with ghosts. Through all his self-justification and denial, some small hidden part of KJ Boone knows that what he has done is wrong. The spirits which surround him appeal for him to acknowledge this but KJ is on the brink of death. Is an acknowledgement of this truth enough even though there is nothing he can tangibly do to correct his wrongs? What form of repentance is suitable for someone who has caused such destruction? Is it right to hold KJ Boone responsible when he's merely part of a capitalist and social system that encourages individuals to pursue enterprise without a conscience? This story raises these questions and many more.

I don't think these questions have any easy answers but the story interrogates these issues through the ghosts, some of whom are former colleagues to the dying man who take radically different positions. Their designs upon KJ Boone seem wrapped up in their own logic and understanding about whether humanity should be sought in those who act in an inhumane way. The Frenchman feels: “To comfort one who remains wilfully ignorant of what he has done is to provide no comfort at all, he said. If you truly wish to comfort him, bring him to admit his sin, then repent of it.” Of course, the most insistent voice we're closely aligned with in the story is Jill Blaine who merely wants to give KJ Boone comfort as he passes over into death. Naturally her intentions seem angelic, but her reasoning behind this is complicated by discoveries about her own past. Her killer Paul Bowman who unintentionally blew her up when he was targeting her husband has entirely forgotten about his crime and her beloved husband started another family shortly after Jill's death. As her short life has almost entirely been forgotten it seems natural that Jill wants to leave behind any sense of selfhood and devote herself instead to what she believes to be her mission in a state of elevation: “Elevation was true. It was. For sure. Me, elevated? Was real. Realer by a mile, at this point, than “Jill 'Doll' Blaine.” Nevertheless, she keeps being drawn back to her memories through the wedding taking place next door and her own investigations into the physical landscape of her former life. Though a state of elevation is her new reality it doesn't provide any solution to the dilemma regarding KJ Boone's guilt beyond offering an all-encompassing benevolence which is offered to anyone merely because they are human.

I felt Jill was a tragic character who I was highly sympathetic towards but I don't agree with her logic and I think Saunders is interrogating her reasoning as well. At the same time, I don't think there's necessarily any other alternative or solution about how to resolve KJ Boone's fate. I want to see him held accountable but I don't agree that anyone should be doomed or subjected to torture for eternity like a comic-grotesque duo known as the two Mels' want to inflict upon KJ. I think the novel itself bypasses offering any solution and instead we follow Jill as she's about to embark on another mission to provide comfort to someone who is dying. Instead of this being an admirable state of benevolence I think Saunders is suggesting that it's another kind of loop her spirit is caught within and a fate that she's subjecting herself to for eternity. Surely if more and more people like KJ Boone negatively impact the world in the destructive ways that he has done there will come a time in the future when no dying humans are left to comfort because humanity will have been wiped out. So the dilemma that Saunders presents in this novel is very dark and sombre.

I think this is a very creative and thought-provoking book, but its brevity made it feel less impactful and meaningful to me than “Lincoln in the Bardo”. I know it's perhaps unfair that this new novel should continuously be compared to the last. But the ending of “Vigil” felt somewhat rushed and Jill's supernatural intervention a bit forced. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it and the experience was naturally enhanced by discussing it with Saunders himself. It was interesting that he acknowledged at the beginning of our talk that reviews have been “all over the place.” A review in the NY Times calls this novel “a hot-water bottle in print form” and the Guardian commented that Saunders' writing is “starting to feel like a gimmick” with a familiar “repertoire of tricks and tics.” Meanwhile a piece in the LA Review of Books comments “the novel sometimes feels weightless, even frivolous.” Since he mentioned reviews of his book, I was tempted (but too shy) to ask Saunders if he felt that any of the criticism being made about it was reasonable and made him rethink how he wrote it. It's difficult to see where his fiction might go from here and I wonder if he is more of a natural short story writer than a novelist, but I always find it writing extremely creative and thought-provoking.

Every once in a while a new book will remind me how novels are really lawless. Of course, the very word novel means that every iteration of this form of storytelling makes its own rules. But some fiction like the jubilantly inventive books of Ali Smith or the wide experimental canvass of Joyce Carol Oates audaciously twist structures we’ve become accustomed to, subvert genres and play with language to produce exciting results. I was thrilled to find George Saunders’ first novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” accomplishes this as well. I’ve read some of his stories in the past, but this novel confirms for me that his high level of literary esteem is entirely warranted. He takes a melodramatic subject like Abraham Lincoln visiting his son’s grave and makes it profoundly emotional. He embraces clichés about the afterlife to create uproariously funny or terrifying scenes of possession, haunting and the judgement day. He picks out quotes from period documents and nonfiction, but interjects his own history between the lines. He writes dialogue as if this were a play to form a chorus of witnesses to the incredibly intimate scene of a father saying goodbye to his deceased boy. In short, he grabs the historical novel and flips it on its head.

Although their son Willie is suffering terribly from a case of typhoid, the Lincolns can’t cancel a grand party being thrown at the White House. During the night the stricken boy passes away and is put to rest in a graveyard – except his spirit doesn’t rest. He now exists in the realm of the Bardo which is a Tibetan word that means an intermediate state where the soul is still connected to earthly attachments before it can pass onto another life. Here the laws of nature are broken for the stricken spirits who dwell there so their physical characteristics are muddled with the strident emotions they experienced towards the ends of their lives. The two main spirit protagonists are deformed so that Hans Vollman is lumbered with a horrendous oversized erection from the marriage he never consummated with his young bride and the features of Roger Bevins III are crowded with a multiple ears, mouths and noses after his botched suicide. Along with the troubled spirit of The Reverend Everly Thomas, these beings seek to guide the young spirit of Willie in his afterlife.

There are a profusion of aberrations in appearance and behaviour for the many other beings that crowd this graveyard. Most especially, some spirits are locked in perpetual battles that have carried on into the afterlife such as a demonic couple with unholy cravings, a professor and pickle producer stuck in an endless circle of mutual adoration and a white supremacist that is endlessly beaten by the black man he demeans. In a nightmarish way, this portrait of the unsettled hereafter depicts our conflicts of class, race, romance and sexuality trapped in a painful circle. It's like endless episodes of those trashy sensational talk shows, but written in a way which is surreal and brilliantly insightful. There is a beyond which these spirits cannot move onto because they can’t let go of their attachment to these irresolvable struggles. The heartrending conflict at the centre of this book is the fight for the boy Willie’s soul between the spirits who want to usher him on to the next realm and the father who cannot let him go.

There have been other novels which have intelligently played out the psychological and social conflicts of existence in a version of the afterlife. Most notably, Hilary Mantel’s “Beyond Black” depicts a medium plagued by her own demons and Will Self’s “How the Dead Live” depicts a woman who died of cancer guided through the guilt-laden landscape of the hereafter. However, the book that most came to mind when reading Saunders’ novel was the ‘Nighttown’ or ‘Circle’ episode in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Not only is this also written like a play script, but it becomes a hallucinatory experience as the fears and passions of the protagonist are externalized. Similarly, in Saunders’ distorted physical plane traditional linear notions of time collapse and the ravenous ego runs riot. The ensuing chaotic drama is a physical realization of the unchained dark side of consciousness where every private part of being takes shape before our eyes. It’s an experience that is both liberating and utterly terrifying.

Gradually I began to feel that this eccentric narrative isn’t so much about its fascinating enormous cast of characters, but the quiet man at the novel’s centre which is Lincoln himself. Here is an individual trying to deal with a horrendous personal tragedy amidst leading a country in the early years of the Civil War. His thoughts and feelings aren’t ever depicted except for when some of the spirits briefly inhabit his body. Instead what we get are a multitude of perspectives about this mortal man at the centre of history’s maelstrom. Accounts quoted throughout the text alternatively depict him as a benevolent saint and the scourge who has torn the nation apart. The conflicting opinions range from Lincoln’s physical characteristics to his political policies. This juxtaposition of public views obliterate Lincoln’s mortality and turn him into a mythic figurehead, a controversial man who has gone on to be the celebrated national hero credited for breaking the chains of slavery. Yet Saunders re-endows Lincoln with the solemn dignity of a mere man in mourning by also showing him through the eyes of the souls that dwell in the graveyard. To them he’s only a gangly melancholy figure clinging to the body of his dead son.

“Lincoln in the Bardo” is an experience like no other. By the end I truly mourned for the fascinatingly diverse cast of characters. The story is hilariously funny, frightening, devastatingly sad, and consistently surprising. It’s unquestionably disorientating to read at first, but soon it becomes utterly mesmerising so that by the end all I wanted to do was read it again from the beginning to pick up on all the nuances of character, bizarre feats of narrative and historical encounters it contains. It’s extraordinary.