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The Pisces
An original, imaginative, and hilarious debut novel about love, anxiety, and sea creatures, from the author of So Sad Today.
Lucy has been writing her dissertation about Sappho for thirteen years when she and Jamie break up. After she hits rock bottom in Phoenix, her Los Angeles-based sister insists Lucy housesit for the summer—her only tasks caring for a beloved diabetic dog and trying to learn to care for herself. Annika’s home is a gorgeous glass cube atop Venice Beach, but Lucy can find no peace from her misery and anxiety—not in her love addiction group therapy meetings, not in frequent Tinder meetups, not in Dominic the foxhound’s easy affection, not in ruminating on the ancient Greeks. Yet everything changes when Lucy becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer one night while sitting alone on the beach rocks.
Whip-smart, neurotically funny, sexy, and above all, fearless, The Pisces is built on a premise both sirenic and incredibly real—what happens when you think love will save you but are afraid it might also kill you.
Lucy has been writing her dissertation about Sappho for thirteen years when she and Jamie break up. After she hits rock bottom in Phoenix, her Los Angeles-based sister insists Lucy housesit for the summer—her only tasks caring for a beloved diabetic dog and trying to learn to care for herself. Annika’s home is a gorgeous glass cube atop Venice Beach, but Lucy can find no peace from her misery and anxiety—not in her love addiction group therapy meetings, not in frequent Tinder meetups, not in Dominic the foxhound’s easy affection, not in ruminating on the ancient Greeks. Yet everything changes when Lucy becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer one night while sitting alone on the beach rocks.
Whip-smart, neurotically funny, sexy, and above all, fearless, The Pisces is built on a premise both sirenic and incredibly real—what happens when you think love will save you but are afraid it might also kill you.
270 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2018
About the author
Melissa Broder
18 books5,159 followersMelissa Broder is the author of the novels DEATH VALLEY, MILK FED and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five collections of poems including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems and LAST SEXT.
Her books have been translated in over ten languages.
She lives in Los Angeles.
www.melissabroder.com
Her books have been translated in over ten languages.
She lives in Los Angeles.
www.melissabroder.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 6,418 reviews
April 15, 2018
This is…not an easy book to read, or review, for that matter. I think readers will be really divided over it. It’s one of those that you’re either going to love, or fucking hate.
Right up front you need to know that while this book is marketed as a romance, it doesn’t read like one. This is more like women’s fiction, where the majority of the story is dominated by the female lead and her anxiety and obsessions. The merman sex doesn’t come along until a good ways in, and even then, for me, their relationship didn’t feel like the sole focus of this story.
The Pisces opens with a bad breakup, and the weird WTFery that persists throughout its entirety is apparent in the very first few paragraphs, so I really recommend getting the free sample of this before you make a commitment to buy it. If you can handle the level of the main character’s existential angst in the sample pages, then you *should* be okay.
Other things you should prepare yourself for: this character is not the most likable. Female readers tend to judge female characters incredibly harsh. I myself am guilty of doing this. Especially with books written in the first person. Because when you’re reading something like, “I fucking hate all these people,” but you, the reader, don’t actually hate them and think the MC is just being an asshole, it creates a disconnect that can be hard to get past.
There were MANY instances while reading this that I thought the MC was being an asshole. Or that I was totally disconnected from her decisions because I would never make them myself. And yet I was able to get over it. Because Lucy is so brutally honest.
You know those terrible things you think? About life, love, other people, etc? The thoughts you pretend you don’t have? Those instant criticisms of strangers based on their physical attractiveness, their clothing choices, their weight? Lucy puts all of that inner monologue right in your face. And it can be soooo uncomfortable to bear witness to.
The people in her group therapy sessions are turned into archetypes through her skewed lens. I think readers will struggle with recognizing that is what is happening and that these characters are not actually one-dimensional. That this author is not actually shitting on therapy or medication or getting help when you need it. She’s shining a light on the fact that sometimes getting help sucks. Sometimes recognizing your own mental health needs is fucking hard. People who have never had to deal with depression, or anxiety, or neurosis of any kind are going to have a tough time connecting to Lucy in the first half of this.
It isn’t until around the 40% mark that things begin to turn around. That Lucy is able to recognize some of her more unhealthy behaviors and thoughts. That she begins to see past appearances and connect with the women around her in a way she’s been longing to her whole life.
That isn’t to say that she doesn’t have setbacks. That she didn’t do things later in the book that made me want to tear my hair out. But the fact that this author somehow had me hysterically laughing a page or two after each one made it easy to keep reading.
So, while this book is definitely not for everyone, I can’t recommend it enough for those who have read this review and still found themselves intrigued.
The Pisces is for readers who don’t have to love their female main characters to appreciate a book. For anyone who craves that catharsis of seeing in print that sometimes seeking help for your mental health isn’t the shiny bastion of love, acceptance, and healing that some people try to make it out to be. For fans of The Shape of Water and Mrs. Caliban that can’t get enough of cross-species steaminess with thought-provoking introspectiveness.
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July 12, 2022
I so don't have the words to review this right now but it made my head spin in all the right ways
August 15, 2022
if i had a nickel for every time i accidentally consumed critically acclaimed content about a woman falling in love with a part sea creature part human as a metaphor for Society, i'd have three nickels.
which isn't a lot but it is kind of crazy it happened 3 times.
this is the best of the three.
it is weird and gross and not as good as milk fed but wow!!!! melissa broder on womanhood!!! on desire and craziness!!! on the theme of nothingness in life!!!
i can't get enough.
bottom line: everything interesting.
which isn't a lot but it is kind of crazy it happened 3 times.
this is the best of the three.
it is weird and gross and not as good as milk fed but wow!!!! melissa broder on womanhood!!! on desire and craziness!!! on the theme of nothingness in life!!!
i can't get enough.
bottom line: everything interesting.
March 1, 2021
make fiction weird again
July 15, 2018
This is not a book for everyone, but it was very much a book for me. I was hooked from the very first page and could not stop thinking about this book in the breaks between reading it (I went on a 4-day hike in-between and would constantly mull over this book while walking). The book starts when Lucy has apparently already hit rock bottom: her boyfriend has left her, her thesis supervisors give her a deadline to finally finish writing the thesis on Sappho she has been working on for years (and in which she does not believe anymore), and she spirals out of control leading to her assaulting her ex and as a result being forced into therapy. Her (much older) sister offers her a job house- and dog-sitting so that maybe she can find her footing again while also attending group therapy. But Lucy is not done spiralling just yet.
Melissa Broder hit a nerve with me here: her descriptions of academia and the slog of a PhD felt on point. Lucy’s thoughts are close to thoughts I have had in the depth of trying to write a thesis – if I started to doubt my dissertation’s main thesis, I am sure I would feel as lost as Lucy does when she realizes she does not believe in her work any more. This coupled with her depression and dependency issues made for a very believable character.
The biggest strength of this very strong book is therefore Lucy. She is unpleasant, deeply so, mean and self-centered while staying believable as a person and ultimately being somebody I could not help but root for, even when she makes one ridiculous decision after the other. She manages to always find the most destructive course of action for any given situation. Her addiction to love (while being emotionally unavailable) is painful to watch, exactly because it is so believable. Her reaction to men is even more unbearable to watch and Melissa Broder captures the awkwardness and heartbreak of bad one-night-stands so very vividly that it made me cringe (and I mean that as a compliment).
I adored this. While I thought the first half was near perfect (funny and sad and poignant and so very very relatable and beyond everything just brilliant), I did think the second half suffered from Broder’s infatuation with her own metaphor. It is a great metaphor, for sure, but not so much that it could sustain the brilliance of the beginning. Still, god, what a book.
First sentence: “I was no longer lonely but I was.”
PS: I have changed the rating to five stars because of all the books I have read so far this year, this one just will not let me go.
I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
Melissa Broder hit a nerve with me here: her descriptions of academia and the slog of a PhD felt on point. Lucy’s thoughts are close to thoughts I have had in the depth of trying to write a thesis – if I started to doubt my dissertation’s main thesis, I am sure I would feel as lost as Lucy does when she realizes she does not believe in her work any more. This coupled with her depression and dependency issues made for a very believable character.
The biggest strength of this very strong book is therefore Lucy. She is unpleasant, deeply so, mean and self-centered while staying believable as a person and ultimately being somebody I could not help but root for, even when she makes one ridiculous decision after the other. She manages to always find the most destructive course of action for any given situation. Her addiction to love (while being emotionally unavailable) is painful to watch, exactly because it is so believable. Her reaction to men is even more unbearable to watch and Melissa Broder captures the awkwardness and heartbreak of bad one-night-stands so very vividly that it made me cringe (and I mean that as a compliment).
I adored this. While I thought the first half was near perfect (funny and sad and poignant and so very very relatable and beyond everything just brilliant), I did think the second half suffered from Broder’s infatuation with her own metaphor. It is a great metaphor, for sure, but not so much that it could sustain the brilliance of the beginning. Still, god, what a book.
First sentence: “I was no longer lonely but I was.”
PS: I have changed the rating to five stars because of all the books I have read so far this year, this one just will not let me go.
I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
September 6, 2018
This is, without doubt, one of the absolute worst books I've ever read.
August 17, 2023
"I'd always imagined that there was a subjective reality, but there was nothing subjective about this. I was objectively selfish and cruel. Suddenly it occurred to me that there really were gods who could smite us."
Lucy is a 13-year PhD student, and her dissertation is meant to ascribe interpretation to the lost works of Sappho. When accidentally she breaks up with her long-term boyfriend Jamie and then attacks him, she gets cast off to love and sex therapy, where she spends her summer alternatively living with herself and trying to find love with unsuccessful tinder dates that leave her feeling deflated until she meets Theo...
Yet again, Melissa Broder has clenched her hands around the neck of my issues and wrung me out until I had nothing left but a whimper. While reading this, my body alternated between feverish and ice cold. Her writing sticks it in the heart.
Everything about Lucy felt painfully familiar. The yawning maw of graduate life, marked by an unfinished thesis. Her inability to hold on to jobs or people, brought on ironically, by her dogged refusal to let go. Maybe you will understand this chase, this euphoria of love too..
Lover be dammed..
Cause it really is the feeling everyone's after.
While seemingly a novel about sex, lust, and the black hole of our desires, The Pisces uses dark humor to further a discussion of codependency, suicidal ideation, and existential neuroses. Are our obsessions, the very ones that destroy us, a cover up for darker truths? Can we obsess ourselves into meaning? Can we poke a hole into the nothingness?
"I think the place for you to start, the question that you might want to ask yourself, isn't so much what is love, she said. 'But is it really love I'm looking for?"
Lucy is a 13-year PhD student, and her dissertation is meant to ascribe interpretation to the lost works of Sappho. When accidentally she breaks up with her long-term boyfriend Jamie and then attacks him, she gets cast off to love and sex therapy, where she spends her summer alternatively living with herself and trying to find love with unsuccessful tinder dates that leave her feeling deflated until she meets Theo...
Yet again, Melissa Broder has clenched her hands around the neck of my issues and wrung me out until I had nothing left but a whimper. While reading this, my body alternated between feverish and ice cold. Her writing sticks it in the heart.
Everything about Lucy felt painfully familiar. The yawning maw of graduate life, marked by an unfinished thesis. Her inability to hold on to jobs or people, brought on ironically, by her dogged refusal to let go. Maybe you will understand this chase, this euphoria of love too..
Lover be dammed..
Cause it really is the feeling everyone's after.
While seemingly a novel about sex, lust, and the black hole of our desires, The Pisces uses dark humor to further a discussion of codependency, suicidal ideation, and existential neuroses. Are our obsessions, the very ones that destroy us, a cover up for darker truths? Can we obsess ourselves into meaning? Can we poke a hole into the nothingness?
"I think the place for you to start, the question that you might want to ask yourself, isn't so much what is love, she said. 'But is it really love I'm looking for?"
May 28, 2018
"Did it take a mythological deformity to find a gorgeous man who was as needy as I was?"
So, if you watched the film The Shape of Water and thought to yourself, "I wish I could find a sea creature to, well, you know," then Melissa Broder's new book, The Pisces , is for you. I didn't know there was such a thing as merman erotica, but here it is. (Seriously.)
Lucy's life is falling to pieces. She's been working on her doctoral dissertation on Sappho for nine years, and she doesn't know what to do with it anymore, because she's not even sure what her point is. Even worse, she and her longtime boyfriend Jamie break up, and before she knows it she's wandering around town half-dressed and drugged, and she suddenly is harboring violent tendencies.
Her older sister comes to the rescue, convincing Lucy to take the summer at her fancy house on Venice Beach and take care of her beloved dog, Dominic. She promises to attend group therapy, swear off dating, work on her dissertation, and revel in the love the dog can provide. However, it's not long before she becomes depressed by how pathetic her fellow group members seem, and she feels the need to fill the empty space inside her by having sex with anonymous men she meets on Tinder.
"Was it ever real: the way we felt about another person? Or was it always a projection of something we needed or wanted regardless of them?"
One night, while sitting on the beach rocks alone, she meets Theo, a handsome and mysterious swimmer. He seems to be everything she is looking for—sexy, intuitive, sensitive, and immensely attracted to her. She comes back to the beach rocks to find him on subsequent nights, but she isn't sure what his deal is—is he a night surfer, a swimmer, or just some guy who never seems to get out of the water?
As her life continues imploding, she discovers the truth behind Theo's identity: he's a merman, but not one of the horrible creatures portrayed in mythology. Theo may be a merman, but he's all man, and their sex life satisfies her more than any of the recent encounters or her relationship with her boyfriend ever did. But as Lucy tries to make their relationship work by bringing him to her sister's house, she realizes that this kind of life may be more complicated than she realizes.
Faced with the prospect of losing Theo, she makes some crucial mistakes, and when he asks her to live with him underwater, she thinks it might be the solution to all of her problems. Is she totally crazy, or is this the key to everlasting love? What does "living" with him really entail?
In The Pisces , Broder creates a portrait of a woman who desperately wants to feel desired and feel loved, and she believes only a man can make her feel fulfilled. The book is part social commentary on the pressure women feel to behave as expected, and how easily they can be taken advantage of, and it's part fantasy (you know, the merman part). At times the book is painful to read because of the loneliness and depression that Lucy and some of her fellow group members suffer from.
As you might imagine given the subject matter, this book is pretty sexually explicit, and it's probably more of a book for women than it is for men. It tends to drag a little bit at times, as Lucy keeps cycling through her depression and indecisiveness. I also had a bit of a problem with the way she treated the dog, so those who are sensitive to the way pets and animals are treated in books may be troubled by her behavior.
Broder is a tremendously creative storyteller, and she imbues her characters with heart, sensitivity, and humor, as well as some serious libidos. This is an odd book, but it's definitely one of the most unique ones I've read in some time. It certainly may make you think twice when you're at the beach at night!
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2017 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2017.html.
So, if you watched the film The Shape of Water and thought to yourself, "I wish I could find a sea creature to, well, you know," then Melissa Broder's new book, The Pisces , is for you. I didn't know there was such a thing as merman erotica, but here it is. (Seriously.)
Lucy's life is falling to pieces. She's been working on her doctoral dissertation on Sappho for nine years, and she doesn't know what to do with it anymore, because she's not even sure what her point is. Even worse, she and her longtime boyfriend Jamie break up, and before she knows it she's wandering around town half-dressed and drugged, and she suddenly is harboring violent tendencies.
Her older sister comes to the rescue, convincing Lucy to take the summer at her fancy house on Venice Beach and take care of her beloved dog, Dominic. She promises to attend group therapy, swear off dating, work on her dissertation, and revel in the love the dog can provide. However, it's not long before she becomes depressed by how pathetic her fellow group members seem, and she feels the need to fill the empty space inside her by having sex with anonymous men she meets on Tinder.
"Was it ever real: the way we felt about another person? Or was it always a projection of something we needed or wanted regardless of them?"
One night, while sitting on the beach rocks alone, she meets Theo, a handsome and mysterious swimmer. He seems to be everything she is looking for—sexy, intuitive, sensitive, and immensely attracted to her. She comes back to the beach rocks to find him on subsequent nights, but she isn't sure what his deal is—is he a night surfer, a swimmer, or just some guy who never seems to get out of the water?
As her life continues imploding, she discovers the truth behind Theo's identity: he's a merman, but not one of the horrible creatures portrayed in mythology. Theo may be a merman, but he's all man, and their sex life satisfies her more than any of the recent encounters or her relationship with her boyfriend ever did. But as Lucy tries to make their relationship work by bringing him to her sister's house, she realizes that this kind of life may be more complicated than she realizes.
Faced with the prospect of losing Theo, she makes some crucial mistakes, and when he asks her to live with him underwater, she thinks it might be the solution to all of her problems. Is she totally crazy, or is this the key to everlasting love? What does "living" with him really entail?
In The Pisces , Broder creates a portrait of a woman who desperately wants to feel desired and feel loved, and she believes only a man can make her feel fulfilled. The book is part social commentary on the pressure women feel to behave as expected, and how easily they can be taken advantage of, and it's part fantasy (you know, the merman part). At times the book is painful to read because of the loneliness and depression that Lucy and some of her fellow group members suffer from.
As you might imagine given the subject matter, this book is pretty sexually explicit, and it's probably more of a book for women than it is for men. It tends to drag a little bit at times, as Lucy keeps cycling through her depression and indecisiveness. I also had a bit of a problem with the way she treated the dog, so those who are sensitive to the way pets and animals are treated in books may be troubled by her behavior.
Broder is a tremendously creative storyteller, and she imbues her characters with heart, sensitivity, and humor, as well as some serious libidos. This is an odd book, but it's definitely one of the most unique ones I've read in some time. It certainly may make you think twice when you're at the beach at night!
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2017 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2017.html.
April 14, 2019
Nominee for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019- Longlist
Does the character in this book need therapy or do I need therapy for reading this book?
Audiobook narrated by the author, Melissa Broder. 8h 20mins
Lord knows that I will read anything and I love to diversify my literary palate. A book about a woman having some merman relations? Okay, I'll give it a try! But this book almost killed me. Now I just might be channeling my inner drama queen tonight but I emerge among the high ratings and glowing reviews and must admit utter surrender. Although I am not sure if it was the main character going the extra mile to prepare for anal sex or the whole menstrual blood scene, but I weep for the bygone days of the good old fashioned bodice ripper( half joking). First audio I have listened to that I really had to stick with 60 minutes each day. Thank goodness for small chapters!
But I am just one lone wolf and my review might just tempt you enough to check it out for yourself. All in all, this might just be the most fascinating book that I have to crown my favorite 1 star book of all time.
Does the character in this book need therapy or do I need therapy for reading this book?
Audiobook narrated by the author, Melissa Broder. 8h 20mins
Lord knows that I will read anything and I love to diversify my literary palate. A book about a woman having some merman relations? Okay, I'll give it a try! But this book almost killed me. Now I just might be channeling my inner drama queen tonight but I emerge among the high ratings and glowing reviews and must admit utter surrender. Although I am not sure if it was the main character going the extra mile to prepare for anal sex or the whole menstrual blood scene, but I weep for the bygone days of the good old fashioned bodice ripper( half joking). First audio I have listened to that I really had to stick with 60 minutes each day. Thank goodness for small chapters!
But I am just one lone wolf and my review might just tempt you enough to check it out for yourself. All in all, this might just be the most fascinating book that I have to crown my favorite 1 star book of all time.
October 10, 2018
actual footage of me throughout the entirety of this book:
(ಥ﹏ಥ)
I want to go back to the person I was before I read this book, honestly one of the worst books i've ever read
when i first started it, i was going to compile a list of reasons why i disliked it but by the time i got to chapter 2 i realized that would be futile bc i'd have to compile a list that 74 pages long
just know that the main character is a self centered piece of trash that hurts everyone around her, is incredibly judgemental (sis how you gonna be judgemental when your life is like this??), and continuously laments over how awful it is to be alive
...she only concerns herself with which guy wants her (🤢) and her thought-process is vile like i was listening to the audiobook while eating breakfast and,,,,,,,wouldn't recommend
actually wouldn't recommend this book at all
also she continuously fed her sister's dog (who is diabetic) tranquilizers so that she could obsessively sleep with a merman, on her sister's couch
...yes, you read that right, a m e r m a n ....
y'all I COULDNT MAKE THIS STUFF UP IF I TRIED
anyways, im gonna go bleach my brain bc i cant deal rn
tw: animal abuse/neglect, attempted suicide (also lots of talk on it), self harm
(ಥ﹏ಥ)
I want to go back to the person I was before I read this book, honestly one of the worst books i've ever read
when i first started it, i was going to compile a list of reasons why i disliked it but by the time i got to chapter 2 i realized that would be futile bc i'd have to compile a list that 74 pages long
just know that the main character is a self centered piece of trash that hurts everyone around her, is incredibly judgemental (sis how you gonna be judgemental when your life is like this??), and continuously laments over how awful it is to be alive
...she only concerns herself with which guy wants her (🤢) and her thought-process is vile like i was listening to the audiobook while eating breakfast and,,,,,,,wouldn't recommend
actually wouldn't recommend this book at all
also she continuously fed her sister's dog (who is diabetic) tranquilizers so that she could obsessively sleep with a merman, on her sister's couch
...yes, you read that right, a m e r m a n ....
y'all I COULDNT MAKE THIS STUFF UP IF I TRIED
anyways, im gonna go bleach my brain bc i cant deal rn
tw: animal abuse/neglect, attempted suicide (also lots of talk on it), self harm
December 14, 2017
I never knew merman erotica was what was missing in my life until I read The Pisces. If existential angst, ennui, and mythical sea creatures speak to you on a profound level of your being, you really won't want to miss this.
Listless after her latest breakup, Lucy temporarily relocates to Venice Beach to dog-sit at her sister's beautiful home. There she attends group therapy for love addicts and attempts to cope with an ever-growing void of despair.
After a series of humiliating sexual encounters, she meets the mysterious Theo one night down by the water and quickly becomes captivated by him.
If you're familiar with the dark and hilarious Twitter account @sosadtoday, you'll have an idea of what you're getting into with book. Melissa Broder is the brilliant mind behind both, and her signature style is relatable to anyone trying to survive the anxiety, angst and terror of modern life.
The fact that one of the characters is a merman comes across as less silly than you might imagine, and more like an acknowledgment of the absurdity of existence: being alive in this world is a strange thing, so why the hell wouldn't there be mermans?
The Pisces is a deeply bizarre, strangely erotic and fascinatingly visceral book about the human need for both emotional satisfaction and desire, and the frustrating ways that they are mutually exclusive. Is it possible to balance love, longing and lust, or are we destined to always want something more than what we have?
I tore through this book in a state of gleeful awe, laughing out loud at lines like this: "As we kissed I imagined eating his tail with garlic butter." The Pisces certainly isn't for everyone, but it was most definitely for me.
Listless after her latest breakup, Lucy temporarily relocates to Venice Beach to dog-sit at her sister's beautiful home. There she attends group therapy for love addicts and attempts to cope with an ever-growing void of despair.
After a series of humiliating sexual encounters, she meets the mysterious Theo one night down by the water and quickly becomes captivated by him.
If you're familiar with the dark and hilarious Twitter account @sosadtoday, you'll have an idea of what you're getting into with book. Melissa Broder is the brilliant mind behind both, and her signature style is relatable to anyone trying to survive the anxiety, angst and terror of modern life.
The fact that one of the characters is a merman comes across as less silly than you might imagine, and more like an acknowledgment of the absurdity of existence: being alive in this world is a strange thing, so why the hell wouldn't there be mermans?
The Pisces is a deeply bizarre, strangely erotic and fascinatingly visceral book about the human need for both emotional satisfaction and desire, and the frustrating ways that they are mutually exclusive. Is it possible to balance love, longing and lust, or are we destined to always want something more than what we have?
I tore through this book in a state of gleeful awe, laughing out loud at lines like this: "As we kissed I imagined eating his tail with garlic butter." The Pisces certainly isn't for everyone, but it was most definitely for me.
April 20, 2020
Smart and subversive, The Pisces subverts the conventions of the romance novel. Lucy is a 38-year-old Classics grad student facing a bleak future. Her long-term relationship with her boyfriend Jamie has collapsed, and her dissertation on Sappho has stalled. Lucy's luck starts to change when, late one night on a walk by the shoreline, the PhD student meets Theo, an alluring swimmer who can't tear himself from the Pacific. After a series of seductive encounters, Theo reveals to Lucy an explosive secret: he's a merman. Predictably an ultimatum is given—with frightening implications. Theo demands that Lucy join him under the sea, giving up her life for their love. This kind of life-altering choice lies at the heart of the romance novel, but here it's literalized and made horrific. The novel's filled to the brim with similar generic subversions, as inventive as they are caustic, and the sex scenes are expertly written. Early in the novel Broder fully renders the clumsiness of bad sex, as well as the strange mix of humiliation, disgust, and dread that so often follows a date arranged via Tinder. After Lucy meets Theo, the prose becomes effusive, delving into fantasy, but it's no less memorable. Well worth checking out.
January 11, 2024
go fish girl
June 24, 2018
I want to make this clear for those of you who get recommendations off me: The Pisces is not my usual kind of book. Anything shelved as both fantasy and romance would ordinarily get an automatic pass from me. But this wonderful review from Hannah piqued my curiosity, so against my better judgment I decided to request it and leave it up to the Netgalley gods to see whether or not I'd read it. I was approved approximately 2 minutes later, so that was that.
Thankfully, The Pisces was pretty incredible, and it just reaffirmed my tendency to occasionally read outside my comfort zone. It's a sort of literary soft erotica story about a woman who falls in love with a merman, but I feel like that description sells it short. Broder's writing is smart and sharp, and her story goes a lot deeper than your average mermaid erotica (or maybe the mermaid erotica genre has hidden depths and I'm just over here showing off my ignorance for underestimating it).
Anyway, a lot of that is down to our protagonist, Lucy. Lucy is 38 years old, has been working on her PhD thesis on Sappho for years and has since become disillusioned with it, and her love life is a disaster. She's also kind of awful. She's not a particularly nice person, and it's hard to root for her - but I still want to, through everything. This is Lucy's journey to accept herself and reconcile her obsession with love with her fear of intimacy, and what could be more human than that? Also, because of Lucy's studies on Sappho, her narration is fused with allusions to Greek mythology and the classics, so I guess this book wasn't 100% outside of my wheelhouse.
And then there's the fantastical element. This was what I was worried about going in, but I ended up loving it. I feel like it's treated by the narrative with a certain amount of self-awareness toward its inherent absurdity, which makes it all the more endearing.
This is not going to be for everyone. Don't read this if you can't stomach graphic sex scenes, or if you don't enjoy reading about unlikable characters, or if you're looking for something with the same sort of whimsical fairytale feel as The Shape of Water. The Pisces is both grittier and funnier, sexier and somehow less romantic. It's both a fun read and an unexpectedly hard-hitting one, and with its absolutely stunning conclusion, I'll probably be thinking about it for days to come.
Thank you to Netgalley, Hogarth Press, and Melissa Broder for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.
Thankfully, The Pisces was pretty incredible, and it just reaffirmed my tendency to occasionally read outside my comfort zone. It's a sort of literary soft erotica story about a woman who falls in love with a merman, but I feel like that description sells it short. Broder's writing is smart and sharp, and her story goes a lot deeper than your average mermaid erotica (or maybe the mermaid erotica genre has hidden depths and I'm just over here showing off my ignorance for underestimating it).
Anyway, a lot of that is down to our protagonist, Lucy. Lucy is 38 years old, has been working on her PhD thesis on Sappho for years and has since become disillusioned with it, and her love life is a disaster. She's also kind of awful. She's not a particularly nice person, and it's hard to root for her - but I still want to, through everything. This is Lucy's journey to accept herself and reconcile her obsession with love with her fear of intimacy, and what could be more human than that? Also, because of Lucy's studies on Sappho, her narration is fused with allusions to Greek mythology and the classics, so I guess this book wasn't 100% outside of my wheelhouse.
And then there's the fantastical element. This was what I was worried about going in, but I ended up loving it. I feel like it's treated by the narrative with a certain amount of self-awareness toward its inherent absurdity, which makes it all the more endearing.
This is not going to be for everyone. Don't read this if you can't stomach graphic sex scenes, or if you don't enjoy reading about unlikable characters, or if you're looking for something with the same sort of whimsical fairytale feel as The Shape of Water. The Pisces is both grittier and funnier, sexier and somehow less romantic. It's both a fun read and an unexpectedly hard-hitting one, and with its absolutely stunning conclusion, I'll probably be thinking about it for days to come.
Thank you to Netgalley, Hogarth Press, and Melissa Broder for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.
November 25, 2019
I read this book in one sitting and all I have to say is:
1. wow
2. ..... ok
3. interesting
This book would be great to discuss in a book club because it talks about depression and making bad choices and getting over-attached to love to fill the voids in your life and it works so well. I loved watching the main character descend into chaos and nonsense, and like I said, I just could not put down this book. I'm not sure that I'll be thinking about it too far in the future because I read it too fast to let the deeper themes really sink in, but I would love to revisit it and mark up some of its great quotes when I get my own copy.
1. wow
2. ..... ok
3. interesting
This book would be great to discuss in a book club because it talks about depression and making bad choices and getting over-attached to love to fill the voids in your life and it works so well. I loved watching the main character descend into chaos and nonsense, and like I said, I just could not put down this book. I'm not sure that I'll be thinking about it too far in the future because I read it too fast to let the deeper themes really sink in, but I would love to revisit it and mark up some of its great quotes when I get my own copy.
April 7, 2018
I received a free e-ARC through First to Read from the publishers at Penguin Random House. I need to stop being pulled in by that siren tag of ‘literary fiction.’ Clearly, publishers and I have very different ideas about what that is. (“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”) Some discussion of NSFW content ahead.
Struggling through a breakup and spinning her wheels on her thesis for more than a decade, Lucy takes her sister’s offer to house-sit for her in her beautiful home in Los Angeles. Her only responsibilities are caring for her sister’s dog, working on her writing, and learning how to love herself. Instead, she takes the opportunity to date a string of younger guys, one of whom may not even be human.
…Did I read the right description for this book? I was expecting an empowering, love-yourself novel that felt like a mini-break in sunny L.A. with a cool, intellectual main character. I clearly had no idea what I was signing up for. It’s hard to say what the “plot” of this book is, since it’s mainly a procession of increasingly awkward hookups and Lucy wallowing in misery while doing nothing to help herself. The first page is an exultation to dog shit (literally–I couldn’t make that up), and unfortunately, it only gets worse from there.
Let’s play a drinking game: every time she says “cock” or “pussy”, take a drink. Just kidding. I’d be passed out cold after one chapter. There’s an abundance of the least sexy sex scenes I’ve ever read, ranging anywhere from weird to outright cringe-worthy, with mermaid erotica being, sadly, the most normal of the encounters. I know male literary fiction is criticized for being prurient and navel-gazing, but I don’t think the answer is to try to beat them at their own game. I’d have preferred a romance novel; at least it’s straightforward about what it is.
Lucy is one of those miserable main characters who makes everyone around her miserable as well, including the reader. In the first few pages, she uncharitably refers to an innocent passerby as a “butterface,” establishing her as an unapologetic asshole right from the beginning. She’s constantly judging people by how they look and only valuing people who are conventionally attractive. She breaks up with a boyfriend she doesn’t even seem to like, then spends half the novel agonizing over it, and she relies on the attention of the male species (really, any man will do) to function.
Worse, she gives nothing back. She treats the people around her like objects put there for her to feel good about herself, and she never does anything that isn’t for personal gain. She’s so self-centered, she can’t even take care of a dog. She scorns the women in her “love addiction” support group for wanting to change. Lucy doesn’t want to change, so the only development in the book is her spiraling even further. There’s a weak attempt to justify her actions with the death of her mother, which was undoubtedly traumatic, but the novel makes no effort to handle it or Lucy’s love addiction. Everyone has an existential hole at the center of their beings; we learn to live with it, and it doesn’t excuse us being rotten people. It’s like watching a really bad train wreck, and I’m not one of those people who enjoy disasters. I have no sympathy for characters who bring their misery on themselves.
The really bad part is that The Pisces perpetuates all these really awful stereotypes about women, particularly the unmarried and over thirty, as being desperate and love-starved. Lucy sneers at the idea that any woman can be happy if she’s single. Girl, it’s called dignity. The thing she fails to understand is that every human needs other humans, but rewarding relationships come in all shapes and forms, not just romantic relationships between men and women. The thing she wants doesn’t exist; every relationship is a give and take, and it’s not possible to live in that thrill of first attraction forever. Whether or not she wants to be alone, independence is an important adult skill that she doesn’t even try to master.
The writing is mostly filled with Lucy’s inner monologue, where she alternately criticizes everyone around her or devolves into pseudo-intellectual rambling in an attempt to rationalize her horrible decisions. There’s an undercurrent of nihilism running throughout the novel, and it’s a tired angle. (I have no patience for nihilism. Even if everything means nothing, it’s best to go on as if it matters.) There’s a heavy-handed attempt to make it all mean something in the last chapter. The dog is the pure love Lucy can’t accept for herself, and the mermaid is the fantasy love she has to give up in order to survive. Yeah, yeah, I get the symbolism. It doesn’t justify everything else I’ve had to put up with in this novel, and Lucy’s “character development” comes way too late to make a difference. What’s more, I’m not convinced she’s changed at all. The Important Decision she makes at the end is made out of jealousy, not altruism. Give it a week. She’ll be right back where she was.
I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.
Struggling through a breakup and spinning her wheels on her thesis for more than a decade, Lucy takes her sister’s offer to house-sit for her in her beautiful home in Los Angeles. Her only responsibilities are caring for her sister’s dog, working on her writing, and learning how to love herself. Instead, she takes the opportunity to date a string of younger guys, one of whom may not even be human.
…Did I read the right description for this book? I was expecting an empowering, love-yourself novel that felt like a mini-break in sunny L.A. with a cool, intellectual main character. I clearly had no idea what I was signing up for. It’s hard to say what the “plot” of this book is, since it’s mainly a procession of increasingly awkward hookups and Lucy wallowing in misery while doing nothing to help herself. The first page is an exultation to dog shit (literally–I couldn’t make that up), and unfortunately, it only gets worse from there.
Let’s play a drinking game: every time she says “cock” or “pussy”, take a drink. Just kidding. I’d be passed out cold after one chapter. There’s an abundance of the least sexy sex scenes I’ve ever read, ranging anywhere from weird to outright cringe-worthy, with mermaid erotica being, sadly, the most normal of the encounters. I know male literary fiction is criticized for being prurient and navel-gazing, but I don’t think the answer is to try to beat them at their own game. I’d have preferred a romance novel; at least it’s straightforward about what it is.
Lucy is one of those miserable main characters who makes everyone around her miserable as well, including the reader. In the first few pages, she uncharitably refers to an innocent passerby as a “butterface,” establishing her as an unapologetic asshole right from the beginning. She’s constantly judging people by how they look and only valuing people who are conventionally attractive. She breaks up with a boyfriend she doesn’t even seem to like, then spends half the novel agonizing over it, and she relies on the attention of the male species (really, any man will do) to function.
Worse, she gives nothing back. She treats the people around her like objects put there for her to feel good about herself, and she never does anything that isn’t for personal gain. She’s so self-centered, she can’t even take care of a dog. She scorns the women in her “love addiction” support group for wanting to change. Lucy doesn’t want to change, so the only development in the book is her spiraling even further. There’s a weak attempt to justify her actions with the death of her mother, which was undoubtedly traumatic, but the novel makes no effort to handle it or Lucy’s love addiction. Everyone has an existential hole at the center of their beings; we learn to live with it, and it doesn’t excuse us being rotten people. It’s like watching a really bad train wreck, and I’m not one of those people who enjoy disasters. I have no sympathy for characters who bring their misery on themselves.
The really bad part is that The Pisces perpetuates all these really awful stereotypes about women, particularly the unmarried and over thirty, as being desperate and love-starved. Lucy sneers at the idea that any woman can be happy if she’s single. Girl, it’s called dignity. The thing she fails to understand is that every human needs other humans, but rewarding relationships come in all shapes and forms, not just romantic relationships between men and women. The thing she wants doesn’t exist; every relationship is a give and take, and it’s not possible to live in that thrill of first attraction forever. Whether or not she wants to be alone, independence is an important adult skill that she doesn’t even try to master.
The writing is mostly filled with Lucy’s inner monologue, where she alternately criticizes everyone around her or devolves into pseudo-intellectual rambling in an attempt to rationalize her horrible decisions. There’s an undercurrent of nihilism running throughout the novel, and it’s a tired angle. (I have no patience for nihilism. Even if everything means nothing, it’s best to go on as if it matters.) There’s a heavy-handed attempt to make it all mean something in the last chapter. The dog is the pure love Lucy can’t accept for herself, and the mermaid is the fantasy love she has to give up in order to survive. Yeah, yeah, I get the symbolism. It doesn’t justify everything else I’ve had to put up with in this novel, and Lucy’s “character development” comes way too late to make a difference. What’s more, I’m not convinced she’s changed at all. The Important Decision she makes at the end is made out of jealousy, not altruism. Give it a week. She’ll be right back where she was.
I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.
June 30, 2018
I love how Melissa Broder literally writes about poop, sex, and falling in love with a merman to cope with the pain that comes from being alive. Similar to her soul-probing nonfiction work
So Sad Today
, Broder brings such a distinct, interesting, and neurotically self-aware voice to her novel The Pisces. I am certain that some people will despise this book, as Broder writes graphically about messy sexual encounters and other R-rated things, and Lucy, the main character, can be really annoying and self-absorbed. But I enjoyed The Pisces because Broder tackles topics like anxiety, obsessive relationships with men, and using sex to cope with such honesty, humor, and intelligence. This short passage, for example, shows the types of thoughts Lucy has:
"So strange how Theo had gone from someone who wasn't anything at all to me to someone I suddenly needed. Was it ever real: the way we felt about another person? Or was it always a projection of something we needed or wanted regardless of them?"
I really appreciated how relatable I found The Pisces. As someone who has dealt with mental illness and irrational obsessions with men, Lucy's character felt familiar and comforting, even though she has a more anxiety-ridden and dysregulated experience than I ever did. Broder's quality of voice and depth of introspection are oftentimes awe-inspiring, such that Lucy makes observations and has thoughts that felt like some excavated them from the deepest depths of my thirsty, secretive, beating heart. A few examples: how she tells one of her boyfriends she doesn't care about marriage when she actually does, her frequent rumination about the "nothingness" of life and how we all cope with it in sometimes unhealthy ways, and all of her ideas about needing people, wanting people, needing to be needed by people, etc. Broder's inclusion of the merman felt so well-executed, as he deepened both the external and internal conflicts surrounding attachment and desire in an innovative way. Another quote that I felt worth sharing:
"I wanted to be immune to time, the pain of it. But pretending didn't make it so. Everything dissolved. No one really wanted satiety. It was the prospect of satiety - the excitement around the notion that we could ever be satisfied - that kept us going. But if you were ever actually satisfied it wouldn't be satisfaction. You would just get hungry for something else. The only way to maybe have satisfaction would be to accept the nothingness and not try to put anyone else in it."
Overall, a mesmerizing book I would recommend to those who enjoyed So Sad Today, as well as those who enjoy dark humor and probing introspection. If you cannot stomach raunchy sex you might want to skip this one. While I wish there had been a little more growth on Lucy's part, especially toward the end of the book - because she does some pretty terrible things in terms of her sister's dog and her friends - I still liked The Pisces a lot. Excited to see what Broder publishes next.
"So strange how Theo had gone from someone who wasn't anything at all to me to someone I suddenly needed. Was it ever real: the way we felt about another person? Or was it always a projection of something we needed or wanted regardless of them?"
I really appreciated how relatable I found The Pisces. As someone who has dealt with mental illness and irrational obsessions with men, Lucy's character felt familiar and comforting, even though she has a more anxiety-ridden and dysregulated experience than I ever did. Broder's quality of voice and depth of introspection are oftentimes awe-inspiring, such that Lucy makes observations and has thoughts that felt like some excavated them from the deepest depths of my thirsty, secretive, beating heart. A few examples: how she tells one of her boyfriends she doesn't care about marriage when she actually does, her frequent rumination about the "nothingness" of life and how we all cope with it in sometimes unhealthy ways, and all of her ideas about needing people, wanting people, needing to be needed by people, etc. Broder's inclusion of the merman felt so well-executed, as he deepened both the external and internal conflicts surrounding attachment and desire in an innovative way. Another quote that I felt worth sharing:
"I wanted to be immune to time, the pain of it. But pretending didn't make it so. Everything dissolved. No one really wanted satiety. It was the prospect of satiety - the excitement around the notion that we could ever be satisfied - that kept us going. But if you were ever actually satisfied it wouldn't be satisfaction. You would just get hungry for something else. The only way to maybe have satisfaction would be to accept the nothingness and not try to put anyone else in it."
Overall, a mesmerizing book I would recommend to those who enjoyed So Sad Today, as well as those who enjoy dark humor and probing introspection. If you cannot stomach raunchy sex you might want to skip this one. While I wish there had been a little more growth on Lucy's part, especially toward the end of the book - because she does some pretty terrible things in terms of her sister's dog and her friends - I still liked The Pisces a lot. Excited to see what Broder publishes next.
September 9, 2021
You have no idea how annoyed I am that this book is squeamish about fish dick.
This is a book that glories in grossness. It opens with a description of the intimacy of scooping up warm dog shit, and includes lavish descriptions of shit, piss, blood, vomit, semen, and every other fluid or secretion you can imagine on practically every page. On some level, I appreciate Broder forcing her readers to confront the fact that women's bodies are human bodies, and thus...fairly gross at times, in the way all animal bodies are gross. But jeez Louise. I think this point could have been made, could have in fact been ably hammered home, without filling every single centimeter of the reader's mental board with rusted, twisted, seeping nails.
Yet here's the thing: Broder's willing to a describe her main character manually removing a piece of shit from her ass in preparation for anal sex...but then she gets scared off by fish dick? SPOILER: Theo the Merman, it turns out, has human junk and a human butt -- which, much to my surprise but very great relief, we don't also have to see shit come out of; I was worried this was only mentioned with such silly specificity because that was going to feature in an upcoming scene. Anyway, his scales start further down his thighs and he wears a sash to cover his bits. Really take a moment to picture this: it is extremely dumb. And, in my mind, a very weird thing to suddenly come over all maidenly about. The Shape of Water describes the fish dick with one gesture. Here we have to suffer through some bullshit about how all the legends were wrong on this one particular point and oh he got a sash off a sunken pirate ship to preserve his merman modesty and hey now the main character can have totally normal sex with his perfectly human dick. But for kink she'll paint his face with her menstrual blood.
False advertising.
Look, Broder can write a funny, devastating sentence when she chooses to. I loved her memoir, So Sad Today, and felt like in it, she really captured, in a way few writers have or can, what my experience of being an odd, often depressed woman in our fucked up society has been like. There is some of that here...but it's buried underneath heaps of scatalogical nonsense, and some deeply unpleasant characters.
Lucy is awful. I am very much willing to embrace a complicated, "unlikeable" female protagonist, but Lucy takes things too far even for me. As for Theo the Merman -- I guess he's lucky he's still 1/3rd fish or whatever, because otherwise he would just be a deeply dull dude. He's not only lacking a fish dick, he's lacking any semblance of a personality. When he and Lucy have conversations, they sound like ninth-graders badly paraphrasing Romeo and Juliet. "I love you I love you I love you I love you" -- I'm not kidding with this. Don Lockwood's bad improv from the first cut of The Dueling Cavalier is actually uttered in this book. Oh, can't you just feel the epic passion?
I know Broder is trying to make a larger point about how this kind of obsessive love is unhealthy, but for a book that's doing so with mercreatures, it's awfully boring and predictable. By the end I was kind of hoping that Lucy would go ahead and drown herself already; at least then she would shut up.
I was really looking forward to reading this, and needless to say, I was disappointed.
Not just by the lack of fish dick.
But also by the lack of fish dick.
This is a book that glories in grossness. It opens with a description of the intimacy of scooping up warm dog shit, and includes lavish descriptions of shit, piss, blood, vomit, semen, and every other fluid or secretion you can imagine on practically every page. On some level, I appreciate Broder forcing her readers to confront the fact that women's bodies are human bodies, and thus...fairly gross at times, in the way all animal bodies are gross. But jeez Louise. I think this point could have been made, could have in fact been ably hammered home, without filling every single centimeter of the reader's mental board with rusted, twisted, seeping nails.
Yet here's the thing: Broder's willing to a describe her main character manually removing a piece of shit from her ass in preparation for anal sex...but then she gets scared off by fish dick? SPOILER: Theo the Merman, it turns out, has human junk and a human butt -- which, much to my surprise but very great relief, we don't also have to see shit come out of; I was worried this was only mentioned with such silly specificity because that was going to feature in an upcoming scene. Anyway, his scales start further down his thighs and he wears a sash to cover his bits. Really take a moment to picture this: it is extremely dumb. And, in my mind, a very weird thing to suddenly come over all maidenly about. The Shape of Water describes the fish dick with one gesture. Here we have to suffer through some bullshit about how all the legends were wrong on this one particular point and oh he got a sash off a sunken pirate ship to preserve his merman modesty and hey now the main character can have totally normal sex with his perfectly human dick. But for kink she'll paint his face with her menstrual blood.
False advertising.
Look, Broder can write a funny, devastating sentence when she chooses to. I loved her memoir, So Sad Today, and felt like in it, she really captured, in a way few writers have or can, what my experience of being an odd, often depressed woman in our fucked up society has been like. There is some of that here...but it's buried underneath heaps of scatalogical nonsense, and some deeply unpleasant characters.
Lucy is awful. I am very much willing to embrace a complicated, "unlikeable" female protagonist, but Lucy takes things too far even for me. As for Theo the Merman -- I guess he's lucky he's still 1/3rd fish or whatever, because otherwise he would just be a deeply dull dude. He's not only lacking a fish dick, he's lacking any semblance of a personality. When he and Lucy have conversations, they sound like ninth-graders badly paraphrasing Romeo and Juliet. "I love you I love you I love you I love you" -- I'm not kidding with this. Don Lockwood's bad improv from the first cut of The Dueling Cavalier is actually uttered in this book. Oh, can't you just feel the epic passion?
I know Broder is trying to make a larger point about how this kind of obsessive love is unhealthy, but for a book that's doing so with mercreatures, it's awfully boring and predictable. By the end I was kind of hoping that Lucy would go ahead and drown herself already; at least then she would shut up.
I was really looking forward to reading this, and needless to say, I was disappointed.
Not just by the lack of fish dick.
But also by the lack of fish dick.
April 19, 2019
The crazy-woman disease
She had always thought we were both safe from the crazy-woman disease: that desperation and need. But now I had fallen into it, fallen all the way under, and she saw how a person could just go. One minute you were playfully complaining to friends about a man’s farts and the next minute you would kill to have the farts back.
Ladies, you've been there, right? The "crazy-woman disease" Melissa Broder is talking about? When you realise that all you want, after all your complaining and longing for excitement, freedom, release from the tedium of your relationship, is to have the farts back?
And so you go nuts trying to chase those farts. You call, you cry, you text, you cry some more, you eat a lot of ice cream, you humiliate yourself. You go into a nihilistic depression. You nurture a self pitying obsession. You measure your worth by the attention and validation you have, right at this precise moment. Fartless, you tumble into desperation to get said attention and validation, from anyone with a penis.
I mean, at least, I've heard of women doing this.
Lucy has this disease. In an attempt to get her lukewarm boyfriend of nine years to man up and fight for her, she gets dumped. She goes crazy and her sister offers her a summer of house-and-dog-sitting at Venice beach as a way to mend. It's also a way to finish her thesis, an academic take on the blank spaces in Sappho's writing, something she has been struggling with for far too long.
She goes to California. She goes to group therapy. She leaves therapy. She returns to therapy. She leaves therapy every time she succumbs to the disease, every time she swipes her Tinder app and takes a hit of male attention.
The first half of this book was a nasty, crude, chicken soup for the soul. I laughed out loud at least a dozen times. It was as if Miranda July married Ottessa Moshfegh, and damn those two make a wickedly delightful couple! The second half of this book, which goes into fantastical realms (similar to that of Mrs. Caliban) that I somehow lapped up with no hesitation whatsoever, got a little more earnest for me. It lacked the utter spontaneity and humour of the previous half, but, I completely understand why it evolved in such a way. And it ended with the right mixture of wisdom and shit.
This book is full of graphic sex scenes unlike any I've read before. They are daring, they are repulsive, they are realistic, so very awkward, sometimes sexy, and all from the female point of view. These scenes serve the plot, illuminating the painful losses incurred when trying to make someone else the solution to your personal brokenness. Can you save your own life with farts? As we all know, farts, at the end of the day, are just stinky puffs of air.
4.5 stars
She had always thought we were both safe from the crazy-woman disease: that desperation and need. But now I had fallen into it, fallen all the way under, and she saw how a person could just go. One minute you were playfully complaining to friends about a man’s farts and the next minute you would kill to have the farts back.
Ladies, you've been there, right? The "crazy-woman disease" Melissa Broder is talking about? When you realise that all you want, after all your complaining and longing for excitement, freedom, release from the tedium of your relationship, is to have the farts back?
And so you go nuts trying to chase those farts. You call, you cry, you text, you cry some more, you eat a lot of ice cream, you humiliate yourself. You go into a nihilistic depression. You nurture a self pitying obsession. You measure your worth by the attention and validation you have, right at this precise moment. Fartless, you tumble into desperation to get said attention and validation, from anyone with a penis.
I mean, at least, I've heard of women doing this.
Lucy has this disease. In an attempt to get her lukewarm boyfriend of nine years to man up and fight for her, she gets dumped. She goes crazy and her sister offers her a summer of house-and-dog-sitting at Venice beach as a way to mend. It's also a way to finish her thesis, an academic take on the blank spaces in Sappho's writing, something she has been struggling with for far too long.
She goes to California. She goes to group therapy. She leaves therapy. She returns to therapy. She leaves therapy every time she succumbs to the disease, every time she swipes her Tinder app and takes a hit of male attention.
The first half of this book was a nasty, crude, chicken soup for the soul. I laughed out loud at least a dozen times. It was as if Miranda July married Ottessa Moshfegh, and damn those two make a wickedly delightful couple! The second half of this book, which goes into fantastical realms (similar to that of Mrs. Caliban) that I somehow lapped up with no hesitation whatsoever, got a little more earnest for me. It lacked the utter spontaneity and humour of the previous half, but, I completely understand why it evolved in such a way. And it ended with the right mixture of wisdom and shit.
This book is full of graphic sex scenes unlike any I've read before. They are daring, they are repulsive, they are realistic, so very awkward, sometimes sexy, and all from the female point of view. These scenes serve the plot, illuminating the painful losses incurred when trying to make someone else the solution to your personal brokenness. Can you save your own life with farts? As we all know, farts, at the end of the day, are just stinky puffs of air.
4.5 stars
May 11, 2018
This was EVERYTHING I want from fiction and I loved it without reservation. It’s been so long since I fell so hard and so completely for a novel. Perfection. It’s that funny/depressing exploration of existential pain, suffering and ennui I love so much while being the exact kind of weird that speaks to me. Broder takes us deep into the void (as she did in her essay collection SO SAD TODAY) and offers us the absurd – merman love! – and I was all about it. Honestly, you quite simply have to read this book especially if you’re a fan of Alissa Nutting, George Saunders, Patty Cottrell, Gabe Habash or any other contemporary author willing to push a narrative and their writing to its limits. It’s the kind of book that makes me very excited about the possibilities of fiction!
May 10, 2018
Spoilers.
I am not sure how much of this is supposed to be satire or funny, but good god this is one weird fucking book.
Everyone’s reviews seem to focus on Lucy’s narrative, which is cool because that’s the main point of the book. She’s a self-centered, egotistical, anxiety-ridden crazy person who lashes out. SHE initiates the breakup, then gets mad when her ex follows through with it? She breaks his nose when he moves on? She stalks him via mutual friends?
Yes, I’m supposed to root for her somehow.
Then she takes over for her sister in Venice. Note: I walk by those mansions all the time, and jealous. Anyway, now she: constantly forgets to give the diabetic dog his medicine, constantly forgets to take the diabetic dog outside to go to the bathroom or walk, manages to get literal shit on her sister’s husband’s coat and just throws it away instead of cleaning it, decides to buy herself $400 worth of fancy lingerie but won’t pay the $1300 vet bill for the dog (that she had to go to because SHE fucked up), gets period blood on the couch and does nothing to try and get it out, and then makes literally no effort to help her suicidal friend.
And after I finished the book, I’m still meant to root for her? No. Fuck you, Lucy. You’re destruction embodied and you don’t give a damn who you ruin.
That also doesn’t even count all the weird stuff that happens. Like her preparing for anal for the first time, and quite literally sticking her fingers up her asshole to try and get all her shit out beforehand. We got a nice description of her shit-covered finger, let me tell you.
If that doesn’t so it for you, when we finally get to the merman, he loves blood everyone! So he goes down on Lucy while she’s on her period, and we get lovely descriptions of his face being covered in blood while he licks her clit and licks up her blood. And if THAT doesn’t do it for you, how about when Lucy uses her period blood to draw war paint on his face? And her internal monologue is saying, “I want to mark him and make him mine”? (Note: this is when the period blood gets on the couch.)
Lastly, when the merman’s true purpose is revealed I was deeply upset with how it planned out for Lucy. You deserve to drown at the bottom of the ocean, you self-serving prick. You killed the dog and that’s not okay. Merman should’ve dragged her down and let her rot with the others.
September 8, 2021
I can definitely see why this book isn’t for everybody, however I desperately wanted to read it because I adored Melissa’s essay collection So Sad Today: Personal Essays I particularly love how raw her writing is and the Pisces is no exception to this.
The Pisces brutally explores Codependency, vulnerability, emptiness, and desire through the main character, Lucy’s, relationship break up and the ways in which she tries to cope with this. As a result Lucy finds herself attending group therapy sessions, joining tinder, drugging her sisters dog and falling in love with a mythical creature.
Lucy is extremely judgemental, selfish, emotionally unstable and hard to please. She is also vulnerable, afraid and neurotic. I will admit I found her somewhat relatable.
‘Who was I if I wasn’t trying to make someone love me?’
The Pisces brutally explores Codependency, vulnerability, emptiness, and desire through the main character, Lucy’s, relationship break up and the ways in which she tries to cope with this. As a result Lucy finds herself attending group therapy sessions, joining tinder, drugging her sisters dog and falling in love with a mythical creature.
Lucy is extremely judgemental, selfish, emotionally unstable and hard to please. She is also vulnerable, afraid and neurotic. I will admit I found her somewhat relatable.
‘Who was I if I wasn’t trying to make someone love me?’
February 7, 2018
I am romantically obsessed with this book.
September 6, 2018
Full review here
A novel that could to be sad and hilarious at the same time. I would never have imagined I'd find a book disturbing but will still will be able to love it.
We follow the story of Lucy, who loses her long-term boyfriend over an angry blurt-out confession and moves away to California to be a temporary dog-sitter to her sister. Aiming to spend a few months there she tries pulling herself together by hooking up with strangers, joins a group therapy with other 'emotionally broken' women, and meets a merman.
I loved the brutal honesty. It came with unpleasant stickiness of the real life drama of dating, but still... The "No strings attached" insecurity of casual hanging out could be emotionally draining and I felt The Pisces had a satirical and dark look at this which I have never came across in any other contemporary work. Lucy is selfish and arrogant, but insecure and childish. I laughed out loud about her comments on Rochelle. It was hilarious.
I think this book was a protest on the perception on relationships today: The women are available and men aren't. You have to maintain your 'fuckability' to remain desirable.
Although the magical realism felt a bit untidy I liked the merman romance and how the mermaid and Lucy tried to shift each other to their own world, pretty much what happens in real life.
The sex scenes were a bit too graphic and it could have been more elegant without juggling the description of sex/intimate parts between pages. But still, I enjoyed this book and found it very clever.
A novel that could to be sad and hilarious at the same time. I would never have imagined I'd find a book disturbing but will still will be able to love it.
We follow the story of Lucy, who loses her long-term boyfriend over an angry blurt-out confession and moves away to California to be a temporary dog-sitter to her sister. Aiming to spend a few months there she tries pulling herself together by hooking up with strangers, joins a group therapy with other 'emotionally broken' women, and meets a merman.
I loved the brutal honesty. It came with unpleasant stickiness of the real life drama of dating, but still... The "No strings attached" insecurity of casual hanging out could be emotionally draining and I felt The Pisces had a satirical and dark look at this which I have never came across in any other contemporary work. Lucy is selfish and arrogant, but insecure and childish. I laughed out loud about her comments on Rochelle. It was hilarious.
I think this book was a protest on the perception on relationships today: The women are available and men aren't. You have to maintain your 'fuckability' to remain desirable.
Although the magical realism felt a bit untidy I liked the merman romance and how the mermaid and Lucy tried to shift each other to their own world, pretty much what happens in real life.
The sex scenes were a bit too graphic and it could have been more elegant without juggling the description of sex/intimate parts between pages. But still, I enjoyed this book and found it very clever.
May 26, 2024
lucy isn’t gonna be for everyone but that’s okay because i love my unhinged, sad, lonely, unapologetic, toxic, unfiltered, mentally exhausted woman who thinks love is the answer and just wants to share her love with someone else so she falls in love with a merman.
note: this is not a romance and should not be marketed or approached as such. it’s litfic.
note: this is not a romance and should not be marketed or approached as such. it’s litfic.
March 19, 2021
"You're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love."
- Robert Palmer
"I always thought I could handle things, until I couldn't."
Lucy is neurotic, has obsessive tendencies and is a bit of a mess.
Instead of completing her thesis (many years overdue), she's stuffing around. Mooning over her breakup with Jamie, her long term boyfriend, whom she was bored with anyway. She didn't think he'd take her up on her offer to take a break. Funding for her dissertation will be removed unless she completes it. And soon. It's all a bit dire and her world, along with her mind is unravelling.
Venice Beach, California Lucy's 'rescue' comes via her sister Annike. She offers Lucy to stay in her home, while she's in Europe for work, rent free. All she has to do is doggysit Dominic (a gorgeous dachshund who has diabetes and needs proper care),and attend group therapy sessions after assaulting Jamie. Oh, and get that thesis written.
Rather than getting her act together, Lucy has no strings attached Tinder sexcapades which are tawdry, grubby and unfulfilling. Also expensive ($400 for new undies which don't last the distance). A revenge of sorts on her ex (look at all the men who want me).
On a moonlight walk along the beach, Lucy meets a mysterious, gorgeous stranger. Who turns out to be a merman. But that's no weirder than anything else going on in Lucy's life. Their lovemaking is out of this world. Though I guess it would have to be, what with his being a half mythical creature. He can hold his breath for a long time.
"...it's the most passionate, real, most spiritual experience I've ever had with someone. And yet, I'm not even totally sure if the whole thing even exists."
Unfortunately as Lucy's infatuation with Theo (the merman) grows, her care of Dominic (the doxie) becomes non-existent. It is reprehensible. Without giving the story away, her obsession with Theo takes over every living, breathing moment. She can think of nothing else.
Lucy is a complex character. Her absolute need for love & devotion is exhausting. She defines herself by men wanting her & equates sex with her value. But once she has the man, she doesn't want him. She feels suffocated. For Lucy the pursuit is the fun part, the anticipation of what will happen next, the thrill of the chase. She's in love with the idea of love.
"I love it. I love love. It's the only thing I have."
Will things change for Lucy with the dishy, fishy Theo?
For such a flawed character, Lucy's thoughts about the complexities of life are really deep. And insightful. For someone so incredibly messed up, her ponderings are spot on. She's quite the deep thinker. She questions the meaning of existence. I enjoyed the existentialist angle. The angst. It spoke to me.
But I can't say I liked her. Lucy just keeps making the same mistakes. And shows no empathy for others. From poor Dominic who was dependent on her, to one of the women in her therapy group who ended up on suicide watch in the psych ward. It was still all about Lucy.
Seeing her world implode is like watching a grim "reality" TV show. You want to look away, but you just can't.
"The real world is rubbish."
Theo (the merman) seems more filled with warmth and compassion than Lucy. More human (the irony!).
"I didn't know the people on land were filled with so much yearning. I thought you had it all figured out, were satisfied."
The group therapy sessions Lucy attends are bitterly caustic and quite wicked in the depictions of the ladies attending them.
"Nobody heals. You need to replace!"
"It's an art to believe your own lies."
This is quite a dark book as it brings up so many topics most of us would probably prefer to brush aside. Or not have to deal with. Whether or not we have these behaviours ourselves. And I'm sure we all have a bit of something that's off kilter. Issues with addiction, abandonment, mental health, emotional neediness, self care, respect, love, obsessive behaviour. Name your poison.
" 'Nothing is beautiful and everything is nothing,' I said to him. 'Everything is nothing and everything is beautiful.' I had no idea what I was talking about but I felt hypnotized with joy and potentiality."
I've been totally unfocused with my reading recently and finished this book during a very, very difficult week. It was just the story to whisk me away from real life for a while. A bit of biblio-therapy.
Trigger warnings!
Animal neglect, which is totally unacceptable, regardless of the state of your psyche. No holds barred references to bodily functions. Swearing. Sexually graphic. Extremely so. But that's ok, as it's between consenting adults... and a merman.
"You can't sleep, no, you can't eat
There's no doubt, you're in deep
Your throat is tight, you can't breathe
Another kiss, is all you need."
- Robert Palmer
July 2, 2018
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
I read this on Friday while sitting at multiple baseball games in the 1,000,000 degree heat. By Sunday I decided enough was enough with the baseballing and took the youngest fishing while waiting with baited breath for my very own merman to come out of the pond. What I got instead??????
Yep, those are port-a-johnnies. I guess mermaid sex just isn’t in the cards for me. *shrug*
Now about the book. Literary merman porn???? Yep, that ‘bout sums it up. God this was a weird one. I really don���t think there will be many “I LOOOOOOOVED IT!” reactions, but there has to be a level of appreciation when it comes to an author who is so willing to commit to a story. Lucy will easily go down as one of the most cringe-inducing characters I have ever read, but the book wouldn’t exist if she weren’t exactly as presented. Hell I don’t even know what to say. Go read Emily’s Review. I’m giving this 2.5 Stars because the very very very end of the thing was almost satisfactory enough to endure the entire shitshow, I appreciate an author who knows when to say when and this one hit the mark when it came to a page count of less than 300 and the cover is easily going to be noted as the best one for me in 2018. However, I would never recommend this to someone so I’m rounding down.
I read this on Friday while sitting at multiple baseball games in the 1,000,000 degree heat. By Sunday I decided enough was enough with the baseballing and took the youngest fishing while waiting with baited breath for my very own merman to come out of the pond. What I got instead??????
Yep, those are port-a-johnnies. I guess mermaid sex just isn’t in the cards for me. *shrug*
Now about the book. Literary merman porn???? Yep, that ‘bout sums it up. God this was a weird one. I really don���t think there will be many “I LOOOOOOOVED IT!” reactions, but there has to be a level of appreciation when it comes to an author who is so willing to commit to a story. Lucy will easily go down as one of the most cringe-inducing characters I have ever read, but the book wouldn’t exist if she weren’t exactly as presented. Hell I don’t even know what to say. Go read Emily’s Review. I’m giving this 2.5 Stars because the very very very end of the thing was almost satisfactory enough to endure the entire shitshow, I appreciate an author who knows when to say when and this one hit the mark when it came to a page count of less than 300 and the cover is easily going to be noted as the best one for me in 2018. However, I would never recommend this to someone so I’m rounding down.
June 11, 2022
I didn’t know what I was doing or who I was being, but I knew that I liked it better than me.
Strange, funny and at times perverse and disgusting, this story has a compellingly dysfunctional protagonist.
The story is told mainly over the course of a summer as newly and unhappily single Lucy avoids completing her thesis while dog-sitting at her sister’s house in Venice Beach. During her visit, she joins a therapy group for sex and love addicts and falls in love with a mythical creature, which is connected to her mess of a thesis.
I am pretty much drawn to any 30 something lead character whose life is fairly disastrous I guess (don’t judge me). This was an interesting take on love, depression and existentialism, and whether or not love can satisfy someone once obtained or if it’s just a temporary fix to fill that lonely void that humans get.
I kind of hated how relatable this book was. But also loved it. (I could relate to the need of fulfillment and being wanted, obviously not falling in love with a merman).
Anyway I get why this book has a low rating and it wouldn’t work for some people, but I loved the writing, the distinctive and bold voice, and how uncomfortable this book made me.
Strange, funny and at times perverse and disgusting, this story has a compellingly dysfunctional protagonist.
The story is told mainly over the course of a summer as newly and unhappily single Lucy avoids completing her thesis while dog-sitting at her sister’s house in Venice Beach. During her visit, she joins a therapy group for sex and love addicts and falls in love with a mythical creature, which is connected to her mess of a thesis.
I am pretty much drawn to any 30 something lead character whose life is fairly disastrous I guess (don’t judge me). This was an interesting take on love, depression and existentialism, and whether or not love can satisfy someone once obtained or if it’s just a temporary fix to fill that lonely void that humans get.
I kind of hated how relatable this book was. But also loved it. (I could relate to the need of fulfillment and being wanted, obviously not falling in love with a merman).
Anyway I get why this book has a low rating and it wouldn’t work for some people, but I loved the writing, the distinctive and bold voice, and how uncomfortable this book made me.
April 22, 2021
I wanted to hang out with this brave-yet-clueless protagonist and to cheer her on even as she poisoned her dog out of love for her Merman. The novel felts very lighthearted and romp-ish as I read along, but then, the ending was so rewarding, and so unexpected, and so lovely and wise, that I felt I’d just read a profound book in disguise.
Even though the protagonist is both clueless and ridiculous, she is open to the world, and knows her own faults, and the lessons she learns in the course of her singular relationship with a mythic creature—about the nature of romantic love, and the dangers of single-minded devotion to another (whether you are receiving that devotion, or giving it)—are beautifully and surprisingly and deeply told.
The sex writing in this novel deserves a huge shout-out. The sex writing is brave and funny, and no matter how meticulously and biologically detailed a scene gets the writing always always serves the best interest of the story.
If, at some point, the novel hooks you the way it did me, then you might end up putting it on that glorious shelf of honor reserved for books that explore women’s desires in deeply satisfying ways, right next to Bear and Mrs. Caliban.
Even though the protagonist is both clueless and ridiculous, she is open to the world, and knows her own faults, and the lessons she learns in the course of her singular relationship with a mythic creature—about the nature of romantic love, and the dangers of single-minded devotion to another (whether you are receiving that devotion, or giving it)—are beautifully and surprisingly and deeply told.
The sex writing in this novel deserves a huge shout-out. The sex writing is brave and funny, and no matter how meticulously and biologically detailed a scene gets the writing always always serves the best interest of the story.
If, at some point, the novel hooks you the way it did me, then you might end up putting it on that glorious shelf of honor reserved for books that explore women’s desires in deeply satisfying ways, right next to Bear and Mrs. Caliban.
May 1, 2018
Thank you, Penguin Random House for sending me "The Pisces" by Melissa Broder, in exchange for an honest review.
Absolute insanity! Holy smokes - what a freaky little novel, and yet I was thoroughly entertained. I think this going to be one of those books that people will either really like, or really hate. I would've easily given "The Pisces" 5 stars, but I was turned off by a couple of sex scenes, (I won't tell you which ones) so I had to dock a star, unfortunately.
I also think people might have an issue with the protagonist, Lucy. She's well...not very likable. I don't mind an unlikable character, but it might bother some because Lucy is self-destructive, neurotic, and, selfish as fuck towards her half-sister, Annika, and group therapy friends. I still found myself intrigued by her because even though she does all these horrible things throughout the novel, she was relatable and FELT extremely human. Lucy is a special kind of crazy.
Melissa Broder is an excellent and kooky little storyteller. Her writing is hilarious, (I belly laughed multiple times) razor-sharp, eccentric, and brutally honest. The sex scenes are graphic, but Broder really nailed it (no pun intended) when it came to her observations on toxic/obsessive/co-dependent relationships (shockingly accurate). I also enjoyed Broder's frank discussions on mental illness including, anxiety, depression, attempted suicide, etc.
This novel is part realism, part fantasy. "The Pisces" is reminiscent of the film, "Splash" but kinkier! Lucy falls in love with a merman, Theo. Strange, I know. What makes this novel so enjoyable is the personal journey Lucy takes in learning and founding who she truly is, in and out of relationships. The ending is PERFECT (growing up is hard but necessary). The plot is absurd, but I had a blast reading it. This book is scheduled to be released May 1, 2018. Enjoy!
Absolute insanity! Holy smokes - what a freaky little novel, and yet I was thoroughly entertained. I think this going to be one of those books that people will either really like, or really hate. I would've easily given "The Pisces" 5 stars, but I was turned off by a couple of sex scenes, (I won't tell you which ones) so I had to dock a star, unfortunately.
I also think people might have an issue with the protagonist, Lucy. She's well...not very likable. I don't mind an unlikable character, but it might bother some because Lucy is self-destructive, neurotic, and, selfish as fuck towards her half-sister, Annika, and group therapy friends. I still found myself intrigued by her because even though she does all these horrible things throughout the novel, she was relatable and FELT extremely human. Lucy is a special kind of crazy.
Melissa Broder is an excellent and kooky little storyteller. Her writing is hilarious, (I belly laughed multiple times) razor-sharp, eccentric, and brutally honest. The sex scenes are graphic, but Broder really nailed it (no pun intended) when it came to her observations on toxic/obsessive/co-dependent relationships (shockingly accurate). I also enjoyed Broder's frank discussions on mental illness including, anxiety, depression, attempted suicide, etc.
This novel is part realism, part fantasy. "The Pisces" is reminiscent of the film, "Splash" but kinkier! Lucy falls in love with a merman, Theo. Strange, I know. What makes this novel so enjoyable is the personal journey Lucy takes in learning and founding who she truly is, in and out of relationships. The ending is PERFECT (growing up is hard but necessary). The plot is absurd, but I had a blast reading it. This book is scheduled to be released May 1, 2018. Enjoy!
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