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Jill “Doll” Blaine plunges through the air towards a large house and crashes head first through the asphalt of its semicircular driveway. She quickly rebounds because she’s a ghost, a spirit on a mission. In this cartoony, ping-ponging mix of pratfalls, philosophy, psychological nuance, and environmental laments, Saunders once again imagines the afterlife as he did in his Booker Prize–winning Lincoln in the Bardo (2017). Jill is in Dallas to comfort irascible oil magnate K. J. Boone in his final hours, as she’s done for 343 others, but he rejects her guidance and consolation. The spirit of a Frenchman from another era balancing a tower of papers arrives, the first of many to confront the oil man about his crimes against the planet. It seems that K. J. used his vast influence to shore up profit and power, brazenly lying about the impact of fossil fuels. Victims of fatal climate-change-generated disasters eventually fill the mansion in protest. Assailed by memories of her life and shocking early death, Jill struggles to stay true to her calling while K. J. is finally forced to face the truth about his life. In this purposeful, funny, and lacerating variation on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Saunders ponders suffering and repentance in a wily indictment of greed, greenwashing, and planetary devastation.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Following his most recent story collection, Liberation Day (2022), best-selling and critically lauded Saunders' return to the novel will galvanize his fervent readers.

Publishers Weekly
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A ghost attempts to guide an unrepentant oil executive toward redemption and the afterlife in the staggering latest from Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo). The story takes place over the course of one night, when the spirit of Jill Blaine descends to Earth and takes on human form at the home of K.J. Boone, her latest “charge.” As opposed to the hundreds of others Jill has visited at the end of their days, the terminally ill Boone is uninterested in finding peace or reckoning with his misdeeds. Instead, he revels in his accomplishments, taking credit for the U.S.’s decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol, which one of his lobbyists ridiculed as the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Crap” for “greenies with hostile agendas.” A fiery French colleague of Jill’s shows up to help, repeatedly crying “Quelle horreur!” as he tries to convince Boone of the devastating effects of climate change by showing him specimens of endangered bird species felled by wildfire smoke. Alone with Jill, Boone recalls his childhood, his experiences as a “Wyoming hick” at college in Michigan, and his defiant rise to power, during which he came to be unfairly seen, in his view, as “the villain... the principal baddy.” What emerges is not a simple story of redemption, though. As more of Boone’s transgressions are revealed, Jill decides she hates him, and the novel barrels into gleefully absurd territory while posing weighty questions about salvation and justice and whether they’re even feasible. Saunders has outdone himself with this endlessly irreverent work of art. Agent: Esther Newberg, CAA. (Jan.)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Saunders’ second novel represents a magnificent expansion of consciousness. Unfolding over the course of a single evening, as oil baron K.J. Boone lies on his deathbed, the narrative develops almost entirely in the interior, while encompassing a dizzying exteriority as well. At its center are two characters, one deceased and the other soon to be. The latter, of course, is Boone, a man with much to answer for, although he doesn’t believe that. The other is Jill “Doll” Blaine, the narrator, who died young and has returned to earth from the spirit realm—as she has 343 times since her own demise—to help him make the crossing. If such concerns appear to recall those of the author’s first novel,Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), that both is and isn’t the case. Yes, as the book progresses, it ranges widely, with a variety of ghosts and spirits emerging to comment on or participate in Boone’s final reckoning. At the same time, it’s a sparer work than its predecessor. This has to do with Jill, who moves from memories of her life to engagement with Boone. Always, she reveals empathy and insight, even as his final hours become a dark night of the soul. “No:this, this now, was me,” she tells us: “vast, unlimited in the range and delicacy of my voice, unrestrained in love, rapid in apprehension, skillful in motion, capable, equally, of traversing, within a few seconds’ time, a mile or ten thousand miles.” What she (or, through her, Saunders) is suggesting is the need for generosity, despite, or perhaps because of, Boone’s corrupted soul, which has been riven by a lifetime wallowing in many of the deadly sins, particularly pride and greed. Such openness has long been a hallmark of Saunders’ fiction, and it’s on full display in this elegant and subtle book. “At such moments,” Jill reflects, “I especially cherished my task. I could comfort.” Saunders has crafted a novel that feels deeply resonant, especially in these fractious times. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.