The Pisces

Lucy has stretched the writing of her dissertation out for years, working in the university library and trying to get her boyfriend to commit to more. When a spat ends with them breaking up, Lucy falls apart. Her sister invites her to dog sit for her in Venice Beach, and Lucy grabs the opportunity, reluctantly joining a therapy group for love addicts and walking on the beach at night. Every decision Lucy makes is a poor one, often dramatically so, and while she would be exhausting to know in real life, she's fascinating to read about. One evening, she meets a cute swimmer and while there are some surprising things about him, maybe he's her chance for love, especially when the first guy turned out to be a creep and the second won't show more return her calls.

I don't know why, but I do enjoy novels in which women are the agents of their own misfortune. And this one has the interesting twist of the logistical difficulties of getting together with a merman, who may or may not exist. show less

Now this is a story! I’d reserved a copy of Melissa Broder’s book The Pisces at the library, but since it wasn’t immediately available, I opted to start with her most recent release, Death Valley. I wasn’t impressed, but The Pisces came so highly recommended that I was still looking forward to reading it. I was not disappointed.

First, many people did not like this book. After I finished I perused the reviews and found that people hated the MC, who by her own admission is a completely fucked up asshole, and therefore decided to give the book one star. This boggles my mind. The purpose of fiction is to pull you into a story and allow you to think, feel, and experience the world through a different lens. If you hated the main show more character of the book, it’s because the author was SUCCESSFUL at making you feel things about them. Like, what? Some of the best books I’ve ever read were about terrible people.

Anyway, yes, Lucy – the main character – is a dick. She’s neurotic, selfish, and terrible at relationships. She’s also an academic (natch) and has been working on her thesis about Sappho for over a decade. The book starts with her pretending to break up with her longtime boyfriend, just to ‘shake things up’ a little, and is dismayed when he agrees it’s a good idea. She freaks out, breaks his nose, and then goes to California to stay at her sister’s glamorous Venice Beach house to get away. Whilst in L.A., she joins a therapy group for women who don’t know how to love (or be loved) and who all manifest this in various self-destructive ways (which I found highly entertaining).

Lucy forms a bond with her sister’s dog, a creature in whom she begins to see unconditional love. She finds joy in nurturing and being nurtured, but this relationship is quickly sabotaged by the discovery of a hot guy out for a swim one night when she walks down to the beach. The two of them have an instant chemistry, and Lucy is sucked into a powerful, erotic relationship with what turns out to be… a merman. Yes. That’s right. A merman. Half sexy human, half sexy…fish.

Now, look. This could have gone badly. Erotic fiction featuring mythical sea creatures isn’t exactly the kind of thing I seek out, but I love magical realism, and I’m down for almost anything as long as it’s done well. And it is! It’s a testament to Broder as a writer that such an absurd conceit doesn’t detract from the novel’s underlying messages and themes. The relationship that forms between Lucy and her handsome fish-man is at once an epiphany and an escape from the harsh reality of Lucy’s deficiencies, leading her to increasingly ignore her sister’s dog and withdraw further from any healthy connections she has with other people.

Broder’s prose is quintessentially Millennial, her characters are self-aware even as they flail and drown in their own dysfunction. Her descriptions of sex (and other bodily functions) are unapologetically frank, riddled with self-depreciation, and ridiculously graphic – none of which is a negative, in my personal opinion.

Ultimately, after a heart-wrenching climax, Lucy is presented with a choice about how to proceed with her life…and love. She has to choose whether to pursue the idea of love that leads to her destruction, or to embrace the un-fun, unsexy, day-to-day relationships that, while void of ecstatic orgasms and the promise of being possessed, are where her true humanity lies. show less

I can actually understand the rave reviews for this one – it was well-written, compelling, provocative, unexpected, intelligent. Really, a lot of great things.
For me though, I’m pretty sure this is the worst book I’ve ever read. I hated it and will continue to never forgive it for as long as I remember it, which will unfortunately probably be much longer than I’d like to.
Horrible, fucking, terrible no-good book.
LitHub put this on a list of ‘a-typical romances’, the blurbs were genuinely intriguing, and the cover is gorgeous, so I thought, I can suspend disbelief enough to deal with a merman romance. I didn’t love Shape of Water, but it was more believable a romance than Disney’s new Beauty & the Beast, so okay, sure, why show more not?
She kills the damn dog. That’s why not.

Lucy is a mess, she’s mentally and emotionally unstable. She’s a judgy bitch and at times I genuinely found this both relatable and refreshing (and then promptly felt bad about feeling that way, because I’m a woman and we’re supposed to be nice, and kind, and maternal and blah, blah, blah… but that’s the point and that is one thing that Broder has done really well in this book).
But as her spiralling escalates (as does the crazy of every other female character in book), I began to lose interest. Good thing, that was when fishboy comes along. Theo is the sensitive version of a romance novel hero and he’s fine, whatever. Their love story is fine, whatever.

As the weeks carry on, Lucy eventually ends up accidentally overdosing the dog for so she can spend more time with fishboy. Perhaps I should have just stopped reading then. But, this is about 90% of the way in and she’s already planning to join Theo in the ocean, so I figured her suicide might make me feel better. But, yeah, no. She decides to live, and never feels remotely bad enough about how she killed the damn dog. How she let her own baggage get in the way of taking care of an innocent life depending on her.

I’m still so sad and angry and, for lack of a less melodramatic word, completely overwrought about this. I know that this is a personal problem and reaction here, and that it isn’t the point of the narrative, but there’s nothing else I’ll take away from this book. Which is a shame, because this is a smart and compelling work and it makes a lot of interesting points about the pressures of being a woman today. The mental and emotional instability ring true and shades of them were relatable. The merman love story was a clever metaphor, it could have been enough…

But, just, why did she have to kill the damn dog?!? show less

Thirty-eight-year-old graduate student Lucy is teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The desert heat of Arizona is wilting her, her longtime partner won't commit, and she's come to the realization that her dissertation on Sappho is based on faulty premises. Lucy seeks comfort in random, unsatisfying sexual encounters and too many glasses of white wine. While housesitting for her sister near Venice Beach, California, she meets a merman who tries to lure her into the sea. Is he a real being, or just the embodiment of her desperation and suicidal impulses? Will she give in to him?

I had expected this novel would be a love story, or at least an erotic one, but in my estimation, it is not. Rather, it is a depiction of a twenty-first show more century woman's existential crisis. I appreciated the excellent writing and the author's skillful use of the legends surrounding Sappho to highlight Lucy's despair. As other reviewers have commented, this is not the book for everyone. I found it compelling in an angsty sort of way. show less

I'm not going to lie. The Pisces is one weird-ass book. I did not know what to expect when I first opened the novel, but I certainly was not expecting what I read. Ms. Broder actually found a way to make sex unappealing in so many ways, plus she created a character with whom it is difficult to find any sympathy. One might argue that the novel is satiric in nature, that it skewers the idea of relationships and the profession of therapy; yet, those are nuances that are challenging to observe because everything about the story is so in-your-face. Perhaps my feelings for the story would differ had I been able to look beyond the surface, but this is one novel where empathy completely fails me.

There is so much I find wrong with this book. I show more struggle with reviewers who describe the story as hilarious because the novel is, frankly, depressing. Lucy is a mess, and reading about her insecurities, her ennui, and her dangerous behavior when it comes to men is not something I find particularly funny. She is abrupt and coarse in pretty much everything she does or says, a blatant coping mechanism that becomes tedious after a while. Her issues with her thesis piss me off because she openly acknowledges that she is taking advantage of the system. I cannot feel sorry for someone whose blatant disregard for a system set in place to enhance learning is a key point in trying to win our favor. That she has issues with relationships is very clear, but I did not need multiple explicit examples to prove the point. One time going home with the wrong man and putting herself into a situation that could have severe consequences is all it takes for me to understand that Lucy needs professional help.

Then there is the fact that Lucy does begrudgingly attend group therapy sessions, but she mocks the idea and her fellow attendees almost every time she attends a meeting. It is understandable why Ms. Broder would make the members of Lucy's therapy group caricatures, as we only see them through Lucy's eyes and that is how she views them. It does not make them more enjoyable in a scene though. Yes, we have problems with our mental health support and care. Yes, we take the idea of therapy too far at times. Yes, there are people who are in need of such therapy and do benefit from it. No, I do not need to have this lesson repeatedly thrown at me with all the subtlety of a wooden log.

Then there is the idea that this novel is sexy. That is a resounding no. There is nothing sexy or erotic in Ms. Broder's descriptions. In fact, her overt crassness in such scenes is the opposite of erotic. It is the cold shower of erotic. As for the merman scenes, I have no words. Actually, I do. Ms. Broder ruined the idea of mermen for me with her depiction of sex with them. Everything about those scenes is wrong, creating visuals that I would rather forget but know I will not be able to do so.

The thing is that it is not Lucy's bluntness that bothers me so much, although it certainly did its job in making me uncomfortable. It is not even the explicitness of the novel, although anyone who takes umbrage at the c word should stay far away from this one. Taken separately, those are a writer's prerogative that do not bother me. It is the combination of everything which is repellent to me. It is Lucy's unapologetic nature. It is the complete lack of sexiness in all of the sex scenes, even when they are supposed to be nurturing and loving. It is the lack of subtlety of the entire novel; I prefer my stories less obvious and aggressive in their lessons. Subtlety in writing is an art, and there is none to be found in The Pisces. While it is obvious Ms. Broder can tell a story which evokes feelings and makes a point, her storytelling methods are not something I enjoy. In fact, I am quite surprised others find this particular novel so impressive. To me, The Pisces has all the subtlety of being beaten over the head with a steel pole; you would not think so many people would enjoy that. show less

File this under, holy smokes what in the hell did I just read?!?!? I am a sucker for bizarre novels and let me tell you, this one takes the freaking cake. For being so odd, it was superbly well written! The one second summary is that this is MERMAN. EROTICA. Yes, you read that correctly. Lucy is at a stopping point in her life. She's been dumped by her boyfriend of two plus years and her dissertation on Sappho is going nowhere. She's simply existing and it's not enough. After being picked up by the cops covered in donut crumbs and clothed only in her nighties, her older sister convinces her to come to California and house sit for the summer. Lucy reluctantly agrees to watch her gorgeous house, take care of the dog, and attend group show more therapy for women going through relationship crises. Therapy isn't helping much but the dog is. One night Lucy is sitting by the ocean when she spies the most gorgeous young man out for a swim. Every night they talk and things slowly gets sexual. When she finally discovers why he never comes out of the water she isn't even fazed. At this point she is so infatuated she doesn't even care that she's boning a merman. It escalates in absurdity and hilarity. What is love? Is it lust? Can you lust a merman? All burning questions. Do yourself a favor and read this gem! show less

WOWW!!

my first five stars fiction novel. ok. let's sit with this for a minute.


OKAY!!! first of all, i don't think this book is for everyone. it is certainly very polarizing and has a couple offputting scenes. i also think that this book found me at the right time

going into this, i thought that it would be a merman love story. me? i love fantasy romance with Monster Lovers. and yet. i have never been so happy to be wrong, and instead, to be met with CONTEMPORARY FICTION!!! but not just any contemporary fiction, no, THE BEST CONTEMPORARY FICTION NOVEL I'VE READ! /THIS/ is what i want when i seek out contemporary fiction, i never find it. i am never so satisfied. everything i wanted ****** ********* to be but it wasn't

this book was so show more interesting. there's just so much to chew on. i love how she explored consumerist capitalist culture, the main character's toxic self indulgence, i love how she processes her breakup and how she compares her life with her thesis on sappho!! and hookup culture? existential dread? and MERMEN?

i will leave my hangups in the spoilers below:



1. dog die :( was it necessary?

2. the scene where she picks her shit out with her finger made me feel sick

3. ultimately i still don't know how i feel about the ending? i kind of wanted her to go with the merman and die lol



i will be thinking about this for weeks!!! and i will stop judging books by their covers, because her other two books have covers that offput me. But Now I Know show less