What's a Satirist to Do in Times Like These?

""Have exported this grief. Some three thousand times," Abraham Lincoln thinks in George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, contemplating the death of his young son as the Civil War rages in the background. "A mountain. Of boys. Someone's boys." It's one of the most moving passages in the novel, which was published in 2017 to near-universal acclaim. Racked by pain he can hardly tolerate, the 16th president realizes he is the source of such anguish for scores of others - an agent of death."

"Lincoln, though, put up amateur numbers compared with K. J. Boone, the subject of Saunders's new novel, Vigil. The president sent boys to war; Boone, a powerful oil executive, contributed to a global cataclysm that may, according to a recent (nonfiction) projection, lead to 14.5 million deaths by 2050. He has had a hand in altering the planet's very weather and then funding the campaigns of denial that have stymied government climate action."

"Dying of cancer in his Dallas mansion, the 87-year-old receives a visit from the book's narrator, the ghost of Jill "Doll" Blaine, who comforts people in their final moments. She's joined occasionally by another supernatural figure, an unnamed Frenchman who invented the combustion engine and has spent the afterlife atoning for it. Jill seeks a smooth transition for Boone; the Frenchman, A Christmas Carol style, wants him to face what he has wrought."

An 87-year-old oil executive, K. J. Boone, lies dying of cancer while the global consequences of his corporate actions loom large. His business contributions helped drive climate change that may cause millions of deaths and funded denial campaigns that obstructed government responses. Two supernatural visitors arrive: Jill "Doll" Blaine, who comforts the dying, and an unnamed Frenchman who invented the combustion engine and seeks atonement. Jill aims for a peaceful transition; the Frenchman demands confrontation with the harm Boone caused. Boone recognizes the extraordinary scale of his power and the devastation connected to his life.

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