Ever since I read this collection I’ve become unapologetically evangelical about it.
I’ve gushed about it to friends and put it on course lists for classes I’ve taught. There’s something strangely timeless about the writing of this book, like it’s from both the past and the future at the same time. Ballingrud has a supernatural ability for using the otherworldly as a lens to examine the struggles and horrors of our own reality. There are monsters here, sure, but the real horror comes from humans and the systems we create and perpetuate; poverty, abuse, control.
A stylistic blend of noir, Southern gothic, and horror featuring elegantly sinister prose and characters that will haunt you, North American Lake Monsters is utterly unforgettable. Ballingrud is a class of his own.
Nathan Ballingrud's Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible. These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they…
Cli-fi is a tricky subgenre to nail, but if there’s anyone who can manage to thread the needle between furious excoriation of the human species while serving up healthy dollops of wit and wisdom it’s Beauman, whose boundless imagination wordplay is put to good use in this dystopian near future dark comedy.
The plot follows Halyard, an environmental impact coordinator and Resaint, a biologist, in a quest to find the last Venomous Lumpsucker. Halyard wants to find it because he’s been short-selling ‘extinction credits’ (something you absolutely know companies would trade if the infrastructure existed), and Resaint has determined that its high intelligence means finding a survivor could rescue Halyard from the pit he’s dug himself.
They embark on a madcap globetrotting adventure wherein Beauman turns his incisive wit to skewering extrapolated visions of the environmental damage capitalism is currently wreaking on our planet. This book had me alternating between laughing and screaming whilst shaking my fist at the sky.
A dark and witty story of environmental collapse and runaway capitalism from the Booker-listed author of The Teleportation Accident.
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it’s all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we’re never…
This book was recommended to me by a fellow writer with excellent taste, so I knew it would be something special.
What sticks with me about this book is that Horton has created a world and feeling that I found enrapturing for reasons I find it hard to put my finger on. The story follows the complicated relationship between two students and a university professor and insightfully examines power, age, and gender dynamics in a way that asks more questions than it answers, all of which was fascinating.
But what really shines about this novel is the way the characters feel absolutely vivid and real and how the sparse dialogue and description (yes it is somewhat reminiscent of Sally Rooney) work to shape a world and a feeling that drew me in completely.
Upon finishing this book, I thought quite highly of it. Now, almost a year later, I can’t stop thinking about it, and that to me is truly the mark of a great novel.
"At once unsettling and totally captivating." - Natasha Sholl
Between You and Me is a riveting portrayal of female friendship, and the frayed boundary between loyalty and desire.
Mari and Elisabeth have been at the centre of each other's lives for years. Close friends since university, they're now drifting through their mid-twenties, working casual jobs and living in run-down share houses. When they meet Jack, a charming academic historian twenty years their senior, they're attracted to the sophisticated, intellectual world in which he seems to move. As the summer gathers heat, Jack is drawn into their lives, and an unconventional…
When the man calling himself Archie Leach begins spotting his dead lover at random locations around the city, he must finally stop running and face the truth―which may not be quite as he's remembered it all these years. An American living in Australia, Archie's had so many aliases that when he wakes up handcuffed to a hospital bed, he almost forgets which one he's supposed to use.
While recovering from his injuries, Archie is roped into dog-sitting for his new neighbor, Nisha, and a reluctant friendship ensues. She introduces Archie to the strange world of the Orrery, a nine-story mecca of surreal hedonism whose ninth level promises to hold the answers they're both seeking. At this rate, they may both end up dead without ever knowing who's been fooling whom.
