SPOILERS AHEAD
Aidt's collection, "Baboon" is unflinching in its examinations of the beauty and horror of the human experience. Primarily featuring incredibly unlikable characters, they do not appear as evil caricatures. A woman can abuse her son, a husband can cheat on his wife with her sister, an assault can unlock fetishes in a married couple, and Aidt's use of language, form, and style keep all the characters believable, often acknowledging the horror themselves.
What holds the collection together are the common themes throughout the pieces. Betrayal (often also seen as abandonment), resentment, family, vulnerability, and desire can be found in each story, some more so than others. The arc in which the stories are assembled is fairly standard, starting with the most striking and ending with the second most striking. However, the morbidity of the final story and the final line ("...he sites down and cracks opens his long-anticipated beer, suddenly feeling like a new-born with everything to look forward to") could also contribute to the story placement.
Perhaps the final story could also be pointing to another theme throughout the collection: resilience. All the characters learn to adapt to the horrors they experience, none are conquered even if who they are at the end is not who they were at the beginning. It's within this final theme that Aidt's collection becomes a master class in writing about the "real world."
