Xanadu’s Reviews > North American Lake Monsters > Status Update

"The Good Husband": 4/5 - not very original, there have been a lot of stories about men being romantic with corpses of their wives/mothers, but this is certainly one of the most disturbing examples. Vaguely Pet Sematary. Very uncomfortable, very vivid.

“How do you know, Dad? When did you ever have to deal with it? It was always me! I was the one at home with her. I was the one who had to call the hospital that one time I found her in her own blood and then call you so you could come! I was the one who..."

Listen to her apologize, and accept her apologies. Profess your reinvigorated love. Fuck her with the urgency of pity and mortality and fear, which you both have come to know and to rely on the way you once relied on love and physical desire.

They ended the night sitting on the edge of the bed...weeping soundlessly, a little furrow between her eyebrows but otherwise without affect, and the light sheen of tears which flowed and flowed, as though a foundation had cracked; and he in the red robe she’d bought him for Christmas, his arm around her, trying once again to reason her away from a precipice which reason did not know.

"The Way Station": 2/5 - a very New Orleansy story that might be about a homeless man who was evacuated during Katrina, but it's hard to tell because no one reacts when he shows them what is apparently a literal window into the entire city, located in the middle of his chest. As difficult to understand as it is to visualize, and Ballingrud isn't giving us any hints on this one. Frustrating poetry.

"I almost went home"...
"I can't go home. I'm stuck here forever now. God damn it!"

Huh? This is a weird time for Ballingrud to go Samuel Beckett on us.

I love all the NOLA locales, but the story after this one is called "The Good Husband." You can't get this far into this collection and read that phrase without recoiling. Probly gonna be rough...but this one about a wound that smells like fresh-baked bread could be fun. Relatively,

"North American Lake Monsters": 2/5 - expected a lot more from the titular story, but it's yet another group of morally broken people who find the corpse of a glowing magical being. This time, spoiler alert, they don't eat it. The characters don't change at all. At least in the previous version, the couple ends up bonding over their shared carnivorous lunar activities. So much potential here, just goes nowhere.

Admittedly, I am biased towards creature-monsters over human ones (where's the fun in that?), but even more than I expected to, I'm starting to resent this litany of human atrocities. Being cruel to the people who love you is horrific--we get it--but we're still subjected to toddler abuse, a mother abandoning her child, a teen feeding his family to a vampire and a now, an abusive father. Plus animal cruelty.

"No, fuck that. I'm more me than ever." The contrast of this line with the broken-spirited empathy demonstrated by the daughter and wife is chilling. Juxtaposed against finding a monster washed up on the shores of a lake, it's still totally convincing as a man who's been spoiled by hard experiences.