#219: Why 'Vigil' by George Saunders Falls Flat for a 'Lincoln in the Bardo' Fan

I went into George Saunders’ Vigil with the kind of excitement you only get when an author has already given you a personal classic. Lincoln In The Bardo is still one of my favorite audiobook experiences, the kind that feels less like “listening to a book” and more like being pulled into a full cast performance. So when I saw Vigil drop, I skipped the description, hit purchase, and hoped for that same strange, powerful spark.

What I got instead was something that never emotionally clicked, even with Judy Greer delivering a genuinely great narration. I talk through the moment it dawned on me that the central engine feels uncomfortably familiar: another story built around a liminal space where the living and the dying blur together. Vigil shifts the frame to modern times and a smaller set of characters, but the structural DNA still felt like a repeat rather than a reinvention. And when the story leans into a deathbed-rich-guy vibe mixed with climate change commentary, I found myself asking what the book was trying to be and who it was trying to move.

That doesn’t mean the writing is “bad” at all. Saunders can still drop a sentence that stops you cold, and there are flashes of beauty that remind you why his work gets so much love. But for me, those moments weren’t enough to anchor the experience, and I left feeling more tired than changed. If you’re searching for an honest Vigil review, curious about the Vigil audiobook, or wondering whether Saunders’ new book is worth your time, this conversation will help you decide where you might land.

Subscribe for weekly simple-home routines and raw book reviews, share this with a Saunders fan, and leave a rating or review. Have you read Vigil yet, and did it work for you?

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Transcript

Welcome And Podcast Focus

Dara Boxer 0:00

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Raw on the Cooked, a weekly podcast that provides simple routines around the home plus raw and honest book reviews. My name is Dara. I'm a Midwestern stay-at-home off to four young kids, and I thrive on simplicity. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode. Today is going to be a short and sweet one. If you couldn't already guess by the title of this episode, we are focusing on George Saunders' vigil. And wow, what a disappointment that was. I have to admit it, I came away very disappointed. So when I saw that he was releasing another book, I immediately downloaded it because I was just so pumped. Lincoln and the Bardo is one of my absolute favorite audiobooks. I listened to it, gosh, coming up in 10 years now. I I don't know, whenever it came out, it was one of those books that still I still talk about, I still recommend, I still think about. It was so powerful. I listened to it as an audiobook and it had like over 50 different people narrating it. It was more like a performance. It was something so special. And so when I saw that Vigil was coming out, I was like, okay, don't even need to read the description. I'm just gonna click it and purchase it. So that's how I went into this. And um, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Okay, so let's just back up to Lincoln and the Bardo because that book felt really original and special and a little strange in a very good way. Like you were sort of like inside this chorus of voices, like in this like in-between world, like ghosts and limbo, the dying, the living, like everything was overlapping, and it it really worked for me in a way that was super powerful. So, again, when I saw Vigil, I decided to listen to it as an audiobook on purpose because Lincoln and the Bardo was such a performance and such an experience that I thought maybe Vigil would sort of like have that same kind of magic, but maybe in a different way. I don't know. So I will say this that Judy Greer, who is the narrator of Vigil, I really like her. I I love Judy Greer, like who doesn't, right? So it's not a performance issue, it's just nothing about Vigil landed for me at all. Like at a certain point, I actually pretty soon into the book, I actually laughed out loud because I realized the entire central concept was essentially identical to Lincoln and the Bardo again, right? That idea of being in that liminal space between life and death, the dying, the living, and again, somewhere in between. So it wasn't identical as Lincoln and the Bardo. It was focused um in modern day times. Uh, we didn't have like an entire um cacophony of ghosts that we were hearing from or learning about. We really only focused on like a handful of characters, but it basically had the same structural DNA as Lincoln and the Bardo. Uh it was like the same, like, we're not fully here and we're not fully gone kind of atmosphere. And that's when I had this moment of thinking, like, oh, okay, like here we go again, I guess. And then there was another moment where I just like again genuinely laughed out loud because, like, not in like a funny, joyful kind of way, but more in like the I cannot believe the direction that this is going. So the story of vigil leans really heavily into the idea of like basically a Scrooge McDuck on his deathbed mixed in with like climate change commentary. And I just sat there thinking, like, as I'm listening to this, I'm like, what like what are we doing? Um, so overall, the book was quirky and slightly ambitious. It was clearly trying to like push an agenda and something a little strange, something a little layered. And to be fair, there were definitely moments where the language was beautiful because again, it's George Saunders. He can write a sentence that really just makes you sit and think about it. Um, there are always the going to be those flashes of poetic, like beautiful clarity that I think he's really well known for. But like overall, it just this whole book did not work for me. I kept waiting for something emotionally grounding or like surprising, and instead I just mostly felt this like repulsion is too strong of a word. I was it was just very disappointing, right? Like it just felt very tired, and I walked away thinking that like this was interesting, I guess, but ultimately it was just a huge disappointment. So, again, the writing wasn't bad, the narration was fabulous because we all love Judy Greer, but it is just not a book that landed well for me, and sometimes that's all it is. So I can totally see some people loving it in the way that I loved Lincoln and the Bardo all those years ago. I can see some people giving it glowing reviews, but at the time of recording this in April of 2026, it has already plummeted to a 3.49 stars on Goodreads with over 14,000 reviews. So I hate to say this and I hate to use Goodreads as a metric, but Goodreads doesn't lie. And unfortunately, I don't think this book landed for a lot of people. So I am seeing vigil for George Saunders book sales. Thank you guys so much for tuning in, and I am sorry that this episode is going to be a short and sweet one. Thank you guys for tuning in, and I'll catch you back here next week.