A witty meditation revealing what our obsession with monsters says about wonder, reality, and narrative itself

What does the Loch Ness Monster tell us about belief, tourism, and the stories we need to survive? In this formally innovative essay, award-winning Spanish writer Laura Fernández travels to the Scottish Highlands to investigate the legend of Nessie and develops a perspective on humanity’s perpetual and sometimes destructive need to “discover.” From the 1933 sighting that launched a media sensation to the cast of monster hunters, fraudsters, and devotees who have perpetuated the story, Fernández unravels how we transform mystery into tourist attraction. Boarding a cruise ship on Loch Ness itself, she encounters a world where imagination and commerce collide.

But this is more than a travelogue. Fernández probes deeper: What does reality consist of and who is creating it? How is observing also living? In a world increasingly hostile to the fantastical, what does our relationship with Nessie reveal about how we inhabit reality itself?

Written with the punch of Douglas Adams and the ambition of Thomas Pynchon, There’s a Monster in the Lake is a brilliant meditation on monsters in the age of manufactured reality. Reminiscent of David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster, Fernández’s essay is both playful and philosophical, a celebration of imagination as the source of our humanity.