Book Review: Backwaters: 12 Murky Tales by Lee Rozelle (2024)
Montag Press
Some literature tries to answer the big questions in life, and Backwaters: 12 Murky Tales from Lee Rozelle may be foremost among them. What if an ant hill become your finest lover? Can an exploding fist-bump actually make you sad? Can a fecal transplant alter the composition of the soul? All of these queries are thoroughly and indisputably satisfied in this collection, and I feel like a more edified and complete human being knowing the answers.
Reader, you need to know what you’re in for with this one: there is a secret Christian wrestling-slash-dentistry cult embedded in the community around the Tallpoochee watershed, and in the wee hours of the night, their members don luchador masks and commit terrible acts in the name of Christ. You also need to understand that they are the tip of the rapidly-melting iceberg when it comes to bizarre happenings around here. There’s also a strange, ageless redheaded woman in the woods, cavorting with raccoons and other wildlife while inflicting terrible mutations on interlopers like some sort of boho Snow White-Toxic Avenger hybrid. There is a man called “Funyun.”
If you can’t immediately wrap your mind around the things I’ve described, you will not survive the miasma of buboas, cloacas, and squiggly appendages (What kind? Your first thought probably was correct.) that are to come in Backwaters: 12 Murky Tales.
“...In some dark Travelodge of the soul”
This collection of intertwined short stories opens with a barbershop fishing yarn about a legendary lake creature with very particular appetites. Of course, this piscatorial tall tale is true in this case, and attracts the attention of a peculiar outsider who is very keen to revisit the location where the monster was spotted. From there, it only gets better and weirder, with each tale shedding a bit more bog light on what came before.
For those of us familiar with the American South, the fictional Tallapoochee will be immediately recognizable as a well-constructed amalgamation of literary hallmarks of the region: we have the townie cop, the alcoholic lawyer, the outsider academic—the preacher insistent on merging their extra curricular interests with their spiritual calling despite any obvious incongruence. Tallapoochee and its people are ones we instinctively recognize in this particular landscape, and when the weirdness in the wetlands begins to encroach on their little slice of the South, they respond with fleeting bemusement before returning their attention to the normal order of the day. Because in real America, finding a prehistoric monster fish is far less important than the fact that the bastard broke your best rod.
Rozelle succeeds as a glib and conscious storyteller throughout the collection, effortlessly blending the Southern Gothic palette with dark humor, regional folkways, and gloriously indulgent body horror. It’s a style that won’t work for all readers, but exceptionally well for those of us who appreciate what he’s bringing to the table. Truly, this is one of the most mindfully-written works I’ve encountered this year, with every passage squeezed to give a bit more thematic color to the overarching narrative. Not a word is wasted.
The collection as whole works especially well, with each entry building on the mythos and revealing new secrets about Tallapoochee. Characters recur, and later stories often give new and meaningful insight into earlier ones. I actually made a conscious choice to restart the book midway through, as I wanted to make sure I was absorbing all of the details provided as the Tallapoochee tapestry grew. What starts as a layered mystery eventually gives up virtually all of its secrets, so there should be no concern on the reader’s part that it all won’t amount to something in the end.
Think With Your Lacuna
I do not personally know Lee Rozelle, but I dread the secrets that exist in his home. Somewhere, perhaps in a shadowy basement office, or an air condition-less shed at the edge of the property, is what I will call Lee’s Anatomical Workshop of Rejiggerment, though he may call it something different. I envision paper dolls as his format, though it could be anything which provides the same freedom of experimentation. When his supportive but perhaps a slightly glassy-eyed family is away, Lee orchestrates his visions, sliding cut-outs of buboes, cloacas, anemone collars, and mammalian genitalia around the dolls, chuckling to himself as he asks questions like ‘what would it feel like to have a sphincter at your solar plexus? Could a juvenile amberjack-human hybrid wriggle through an auxiliary anus, perhaps if it were slightly torn? Can the tongue grow scales?’
If you think my speculation about Lee’s personal space is weird, go read the book.
The body horror in this collection is next-level, creative, and gleefully indulgent, to the point that I feel it almost refreshes the subgenre with new torturous ideas. There are many elements to this collection–the humor, the background, the science-fiction and horror story elements, but all of these are secondary enthusiasm the author demonstrates for body horror. Readers not only need to be okay with body horror, but probably enthusiastic about it to really enjoy the collection.
Final Thoughts
After many hours of pained consideration, I have decided to declare that this is the finest piece of literature to ever come out of the state of Alabama. Backwaters: 12 Murky Tales is a gloriously tumescent chimera of Southern Gothic hallmarks, obsessively-described body horror, and bizarro-absurdist humor which despite its myriad components, comes out exceptionally coherent and expertly paced. I have no doubt that this text will be used to separate the wheat from the chaff in the literary world’s next generation of critics, and, God willing, be found alongside the leavings of the Gideon’s in every Alabama hotel room by the year 2040. Buy two copies: one for yourself, another to leave near a body of water in your community.
Score: 9.6
Strengths
Uses all of its elements and themes exceptionally well
Genuinely clever
Strong prose, both engaging and animated
Weaknesses
Readers better have strong, positive feelings about body horror
Blend of bizarre humor and unsettling grossness may be too clever for some
Readers unfamiliar with the American South may not connect or appreciate some of the literary aspects as strongly
You can purchase Backwaters: 12 Murky Tales on Amazon.
You may also like: Soul Plumber, Creepshow, Resident Evil 7, Dreadstream, The Elementals, Those Across the River, The Bible
