Vigil
A book full of philosophical musings, corny antics and plaintive yearnings set down in lines as surprising and agile as deer ... With its concentration on the great final choice between deathbed redemption and eternal damnation, Vigil is a strikingly weird work of modern fiction. It seems instead to have risen up from the loamy soil of medieval allegory ... Saunders is wise to keep this short. It’s satisfying, of course, to see a billionaire world-wrecker sizzle on a bed of pain. But on the other hand, Boone risks feeling about as engaging as Hypocrisy ... Saunders uses the considerable rhetorical power of his prose to push this gracious idea that comfort is all we can offer ... Jill’s ethic is superficially lovely, but it’s also fundamentally disempowering and condescending.
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Breathtaking ... The novel is neither morbid nor morose. In fact, there is a great deal of well-meaning dark humor ... It’s a virtuoso achievement, an immersive experience for the reader.
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Saunders’s fiction has begun to feel both darker and a bit frustrated, spiritually and artistically. You see the problem: What’s a satirist to do in times like these? ... May raise questions about how much empathy (or come-uppance) its villainous subject is owed. I’m agnostic on that, but I do think he should at least be interesting, and Boone is not ... Has no view of systems, no analysis of power ... I started imagining an alternative version in which the same raw materials...are assembled into something leaner, meaner, and more lively ... Not much of a character study. Nature or nurture, it’s hard to care where he ends up.
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