A British pilot survives a plane crash, meets a US servicewoman and falls in love. In heaven, however, a mistake is discovered.

Here is the mathematical logic of the spirit: If love is the quality of attention we pay something other than ourselves and hate is the veil of not understanding ourselves, then loving the world more — the other word for which is kindness — is largely a matter of deepening our awareness and sharpening our attention on both sides of the skin that membranes the self. George Saunders — whose gorgeous novels and essays are a kind of jungle gym for playing with your assumptions rigorously and sensitively enough to grow the agility of perspective called empathy — explores this… read article