George Saunders has spent a career unpacking one of the central contradictions of life: that we are loving creatures capable of creating monstrous worlds. Since his debut collection in 1996, Saunders has become something of a secular saint, a writer whose sense of the world’s abounding horrors is balanced with a trademark humor and humanity. In one way, his most recent offering, Vigil, is the extension of those themes his devotees have come to love.