2.5 less on the pile: North American Lake Monsters, Zero Saints, and Innocents and Others.

I read North American Lake Monsters once before, or most of it, but maybe I didn’t have time to absorb itit exactly, or all of it, but this time I did. I could get into the language and the way Balingrud twists up the tension, especially, in a story like Way Station, with the transitions. And the weirdness, which Balingrud knows from. After Way Station, the Crevasse has to be one of the North American Lake Monster tales that gnawed the deepest, but Sunbleached tore me apart. I’d read The Visible Filth around the new year, and, maybe because I didn’t go into it cold, was prepared for the ending, so I was able to allow the in media res disintegration of the main character to be my focus, let it chew at me for a while.

And Zero Saints, Gabino Iglesias’s debut novel. Lots of us know him from his reviews and non-fiction, which is always nuanced, self-aware, and funny as hell, so it’s no surprise to me that I’m loving the loco ride of Zero Saints, Iglesias’s control too, and, okay, it’s still on the pile, but not for long.

And Diana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others. I reviewed that for LitReactor, here.