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A review by fartsimpson
North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
a lot of stuff i liked, and a lot of stuff i didn't like at all. i originally picked this up in the midst of my true detective s1 fever, desperate to find something else that captured the sort of feelings and thoughts that season of television put forth. it did kind of scratch that itch. i appreciated the themes in this, the mundanity of what felt supernatural. it felt like real people lived in this world, and it did a great job of exploring the way their working-class lives were affected by these circumstances often forced upon them. "Wild Acre" felt like a particularly good example of all of the things i really liked about this collection. the prose here is beautiful, and i highlighted a lot of passages.
that being said: there is lots and lots of unnecessary, violent misogyny and racism going on here. i don't necessarily think including these concepts in your story inherently makes it worse -- characters in fiction do not have to be morally righteous, in fact i'm much more interested when they aren't -- but in this work they seemed as if they had no greater point, and were tangential to story being told. which begs the ultimate question when you want to include stuff like this in your work, that being: well, why?
there's so much nuance going on here in the writing that is completely lost when it comes to these more difficult concepts. i wanted to like this so much more. the bones of this short story collection are largely my exact niche and preference for content, but it fumbled a lot for me, especially near the end.
that being said: there is lots and lots of unnecessary, violent misogyny and racism going on here. i don't necessarily think including these concepts in your story inherently makes it worse -- characters in fiction do not have to be morally righteous, in fact i'm much more interested when they aren't -- but in this work they seemed as if they had no greater point, and were tangential to story being told. which begs the ultimate question when you want to include stuff like this in your work, that being: well, why?
there's so much nuance going on here in the writing that is completely lost when it comes to these more difficult concepts. i wanted to like this so much more. the bones of this short story collection are largely my exact niche and preference for content, but it fumbled a lot for me, especially near the end.