LITERATURE IS PEPPERED with powerful men who, after lives of dangerous consequence on Earth, grapple with the eternal judgment of heaven. Dante filled his inferno with the writhing wrongdoers of his day. Dickens gave us Ebenezer Scrooge, whose festive ghosts spooked him into more socialistic thinking. And who can forget the time when President Donald Trump himself publicly mused that he might not make it to heaven, after all? Literature and, every once in a rare while, life.
In his crackling new novel, Vigil, George Saunders offers another such fable for the climate crisis. Unrepentant on his death bed, oil tycoon K.J. Boone receives visitors from the past, present, and future who hope to hold him to account for his sins. Species of birds wiped out by habitat loss fly over his hospice setup; human casualties of heat waves and droughts testify. Bearing witness to the barrage is Jill, a ghost-angel charged with comforting Boone as he crosses over.
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