Werewolves, Vampires, Zombies, Serial Killers, and the Horror of Mundane Lives: Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters
Nathan Ballingrud’s short stories have been making the rounds for a while, with some of the most prestigious names in contemporary weird fiction and horror sounding his praises. Jeff VanderMeer calls Ballingrud “One of my favorite short fiction writers” and Laird Barron claims that Ballingrud’s debut horror collection “deserves a place of honor in the canon of the dark fantastic.” Thus I’ve had my eye on Ballingrud’s collection, North American Lake Monsters, since last summer when it first came out. I recently got my hands on it and it was definitely worth the wait.
Ballingrud’s fiction is an amalgamation of some of the best elements of current dark fiction. The stories of North American Lake Monsters are poetic and literary (think Kelly Link or Caitlin Kiernan), forbidding and nihilistic (think John Langan), very real and raw (think Nic Pizzolatto), while also scaring the bejesus out of you (think Laird Barron).
I’m not a big fan of some of the dark and weird fiction coming out nowadays. Though much of it takes its trajectory from cosmic horror, which I love, set by late nineteenth and early twentieth century writers like Robert W. Chambers, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, and most singularly that of H. P. Lovecraft, the stories of many current masters, such as Thomas Ligotti, tend to leave me more depressed than horrified. (Not necessarily a criticism, more of a personal bias.)
Though Ballingrud’s stories are similarly dark and depressing in many ways, his characterizations, his use of horror tropes, and his building of suspense are so good that I usually end one of his stories with more of a horrified thrill than just simple heavy-heartedness.
