Vigil by George Saunders is the author’s latest novel. I have loved his short stories and I also was enthralled by Lincoln in the Bardo, but this book left me cold. In the novel, a being (Angel? Ghost? Spirit?) arrives at the bedside of man who is near death. Her mission, apparently, is to help the man recognize the damage he has done to the planet through his fossil-fuels business. Some of the being’s “ilk” show up to drive the message home even harder. The book lacks subtlety.
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (translated from Dutch by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore) was my book club’s selection for May. It’s a naïve and over-simplistic argument about how people are basically good and not the greedy bastards some psychologists and sociologists have argued. When we were nomadic hunter-gatherers, he argues, there was no war and we all got along just fine. Sure we did. Until things got crowded. He blames private property and “civilization” for war and criminal behavior, but I’m not sure he’s taking into account the fact that there are eight billion people on the planet.
House Parties by Lynn Levin is a collection of short stories by a writer I met at a conference recently. (We were also in the same class in college but didn’t know each other.) This is a fine collection of stories. All are very good and some are outstanding.
