A wild ride through recent history, otherworldly reunions and good and evil suitably big themes for one of Americas most distinguished and original writers * Spectator * A tender morality tale intrigue thrums everywhere * Observer * The first must-read book of the year * Vogue * Faulkner meets Citizen Kane... such is Saunders skill and empathetic imagination that the questions raised by his concocted other world... generally prove more mysterious than mystifying * Financial Times * Staggering... Saunders has outdone himself with this endlessly irreverent work of art * Publishers Weekly * Vigil moves into even more anarchic and funny territory than that 2017 Booker-winning masterpiece with this new novels unhinged spirits and pitiful ghosts a meditation on the manipulative nature of modern language resonates deeply in our fractious, selfish age * Independent * A magnificent expansion of consciousness... Saunders has crafted a novel that feels deeply resonant, especially in these fractious times * Kirkus Reviews * Exquisitely strange and beautiful, devastating, and so, so funny. Nobody but George Saunders writes like this * Meg Mason * With acuity and explosive imagination, Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time: the menace of corporate greed * i Paper * An imaginative, highly entertaining homage to A Christmas Carol * Mail on Sunday * George Saunders, has produced his own riff on the story of George Bailey. Like Capras film, Vigil is a superbly wrought bit of sentimental fantasy that shades gradually into something darker and more troubling * Irish Times * The prose zips with the authors trademark wisecracks and quick-fire repartee at a time when doomsayers predict the demise of the novel destined, supposedly, to be seen off by glitzier distractions and dwindling attention spans Mr Saunders has a recipe for fictions survival, as well as a rationale for reading it. Finding new ways to tell stories with words on a page, his work nudges forward the boundaries of the form. He powers his empathy machine with restless invention * Economist * He writes in a way that is so engaging and beautiful ... so immersive and incredible but also brutal * Viv Groskop * He boils down this vast global problem to an emotion ... he has an enormous empathy that extends to all sorts of people * Tom Sutcliffe * Anyone familiar with Saunderss work either Lincoln or his several books of tragicomic short stories that preceded it will know to expect something unusual, and he doesnt disappoint * Irish Times * Formidable. The sentences snap and pivot; jokes arrive, then suddenly float into a colder register. He can turn celestial paperwork into something like tragedy ... a theatrical moral fable * Irish Independent * Elegant and witty ... Vigil is a finely crafted novel that explores comfort, repentance, and the path to redemption, which must be sought again and again * Irish Examiner * Brimming with the compassion and insight that has won Saunders legion of fans, it eschews caricature in favour of profound empathy ... its also funny and vivid and populated with endearing nutcases * Shakespeare & Co. podcast * Its an extraordinary book; the work of a modern master with a full-spectrum understanding of fantastic fiction * SFX * Shares hilarity with sadness and meditates on redemption or, more pertinently, a lack of it ... demands more than a single read * Buzz * Vintage Saunders * Restless Magazine * This centurys Vonnegut we will be reading it again and again and if that doesnt tell you everything you need to know... * Bookmunch *
