In his award-winning debut collection Nathan Ballingrud is intent on exposing faultlines in personal relationships; laying bare, as he puts it, the love that warps and makes monsters of us all – underlined by his choice of preface, an extract from Graham Greene’s angst-ridden The End of the Affair. With the notable exception of co-authored “The Crevasse,” Ballingrud’s primary focus is on working-class Americans, mainly blue-collar, mainly men. People subsisting on the outer edges of their communities: from the alienated teens featured in “S. S.” and “Sunbleached” to ex-cons, and women working minimum-wage jobs. Toxic masculinity’s rife but so is trauma, intense grief and overwhelming emotions that threaten to manifest through brutal acts of violence. These aspects of his work have stirred comparisons between Ballingrud and writers like Raymond Carver. But, rather than ‘dirty realism’, Ballingrud’s territory is the weird, surreal or horrific – and uncanny spaces in between. Ballingrud splices slice-of-life scenarios with more conventionally supernatural material: werewolves, vampires, alien/heavenly creatures. It’s an intriguing approach but I wasn’t always convinced by the end results. Ballingrud’s abrupt transitions and juxtapositions could be unusually productive as in the deeply unsettling “You Go Where It Takes You.” But could also feel awkwardly sutured, distinctly uneven, the title story is a prime example.

I appreciated Ballingrud’s emphasis on the marginalised and the dispossessed. But I found the absence of sustained political commentary frustrating. His narratives have a fatalistic slant which undermines an implied critique of American society. Transformation or metamorphosis was a recurring theme yet yielded no tangible results or benefits: a pact with a vampire leads to a devastating betrayal; an encounter with the beached remnants of an ancient monster is a metaphor for a father’s inability to forge meaningful relationships. Ballingrud's protagonists were often sympathetic but could also verge on stereotypical: the down-on-her-luck waitress struggling to raise her daughter on her own; the angry, impoverished adolescent boy who flirts with joining a neo-Nazi cult. Ballingrud’s a skilful writer who veers between complex imagery, carefully-crafted sentences and a more visceral, visual style – it was no surprise to find his book inspired a TV mini-series Monsterland. His scenes can be arrestingly atmospheric but equally they can be economical, terse even. One of the standouts for me was “The Crevasse” even though it left me wanting more. It revolves around an ill-omened expedition to the Antarctic just after WW1. Deliberately Lovecraftian, cosmic horror deftly combined with echoes of Algernon Blackwood, John Carpenter’s The Thing and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Overall, worth the time but not as memorable as I’d hoped.

3.5 stars
As with all short story collections, there were some stories that I loved and others not so much. The story about angels was especially interesting. The bleak, unflinching commentary on the American South, masculinity and death added layers to these stories that made them more compelling to read. A real haunting collection, I enjoyed these stories more than I do most collections.

One of best and most consistently strong collections of short stories I've ever read.

This is a UK reprint (possibly the first official UK publication? I'm not sure) of fan-favourite author Nathan Ballingrud's short horror-tinged stories, to be followed later in the year by The Atlas of Hell (previously published as Wounds).

Several of these stories as askew new looks at classic horror tropes: the vampire, the zombie and so on. Many horror fans may be disappointed by these stories refusal to be out-and-out horror by the numbers. Don't miss out though: these are masterclasses in short story writing and you'll be thinking about them for a long time after putting the book down.

“A ghost is something that fills a hole inside you, where you lost something. It's a memory. Sometimes it can be painful, and sometimes it can be scary. Sometimes it's hard to tell where the ghost ends and real life begins.”

Nathan Ballingrud's collection is a picture of the monsters within and around us. Born from a basic need we as humans have for love and companionship, these stories take those aspects of us and bring a mix of supernatural horror stories.

I have read a few works by this author and thought I'd know what I was in for with this collection but I was pleasantly surprised. As mentioned before, the author takes these human traits and merges them with the monsters we don't anticipate.

Straight away the opening story will leave you speechless. Once I had read it I kept saying "WTF" 🙈 The stories follow the theme of masculinity and what it means for the varying characters.

North American Lake Monsters is creepy, and sometimes beautiful, horror - always of the human variety and accompanied by monsters. Each of the nine stories have the same cohesive street-level style that lets you sink your teeth into the collection as a complete piece. 'The Crevasse' stayed in my mind for days. While slightly disturbing, none of the stories are too scary.

I’ve been waiting a long time for a UK edition of this one, and Dead Ink have finally obliged. It was worth the wait, an astonishing collection of stories. It doesn’t stint on the promise of monsters in the title, there are vampires, zombies werewolves and -yes!- a lake monster here, but it’s always the humans in the foreground. Not necessarily particularly likeable ones either, although you needn’t fear that this is some kind of trite ‘actually, MAN is the real monster’ exercise. Ballingrud manages to make us empathise with his cast of ex-cons, homeless people, harassed mothers, and lost children looking for fathers and belonging. It’s elegant, atmospheric and disturbing. What more do you want?

This is an excellent collection of subtle, dark, and cerebral stories that take you to some of the deepest recesses of the human condition, but without the need for excessive gore, shock, or violence.

The stories here loom over you, they feel heavy with sadness and bleak thoughts, and they get under your skin and stay there. They are literary, but accessible too. The writing here is delicate, haunting, and affecting.

Some quick notes on each tale:

You go where it takes you: dark and unexpected turns. You never know who you might meet at work and what they might inspire you to do

Wild acre: slow burning spiral of madness after a guy sees his colleagues ripped apart by some kind of wolf beast

S.S. : dark tale of racism, poverty, desire and anger, teenager trying to prove himself to a local white supremacy gang

The Crevasse (with Dale Bailey): what, exactly, was under the ice? Real or imagined? What took the dog? Bleak and dread-inducing

The Monsters of Heaven: mixture of a missing child and a swathe of ‘angels’ being discovered. Odd and endearing.

Sunbleached: a terrific vampire story! Sad and looming

North American lake monsters: a man has to deal with a dead monster and reconnect with his wife and daughter after being in prison for six years. Gloomy, dread-inducing - I am the Doorway vibes

The Way Station: didn’t really get this one. Homeless guy trying to find his long-estranged daughter

The Good Husband: pick of the bunch. A truly dark and disturbing tale about a husband forced to live every day with the consequences of not helping his wife when she needed him. Scary, bleak and disgusting at times…powerful writing.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

North American Lake Monsters is a short story collection exploring different kinds of monsters, human and otherwise, and the messy realities of these. There's a real range of stories in the collection and you're always guessing what kind of horror, whether creature or psychological or something else, is going to appear in each one. There's a lot about class in America and the impacts of desperation in relation to class, wealth, and worth, and I particularly like how this plays out in the titular story, which explores how we see different kinds of monsters and the importance of viewpoint. I also like how often any supernatural or otherworldly elements feel almost secondary in relevance to the working class lives in the book, with other people having a more important role in their stories and the horror within. If you like literary-tinged horror that shines a light on working class America, then this collection will be ideal.