This is, for lack of a better phrase, an 'intellectual novel'. One of those books that thrives on using eloquent language and reminds you that you have a very small vocabulary in comparison to Melissa Broder. However. There's something strangely captivating about this little book. Perhaps it's the raunchy sex scenes, which made me so happy to read because they feel some female focused, forcing readers to confront female sexuality- which is awesome and amazing to finally see! Maybe it's the fact that the love interest is half man, half fish. The whole concept of Theo was simultaneous attractive and hilarious to me, and though we do share a few things (i.e. a fear of dogs), he's such a sweet and sexy character that you'll find yourself craving more and more of the book. Though it takes a little while to get into, this is a really fun book that I hugely enjoyed and one that you'll find yourself unable to put down once you get into it. It'll be a perfect summer read- especially if you're on the beach!

At first I thought this was one of those funny, quirky but somewhat insubstantial novels about a thirtysomething stuck with a life she isn’t sure she wants – something along the lines of Goodbye, Vitamin, The Portable Veblen, or All Grown Up. Then I thought it was just a crass sex comedy. (Broder is a poet. I can’t begin to imagine what her poetry would be like!) But the further I read the deeper it all seemed to become: tropes from Greek myth and the fluidity of gender roles made me think of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, another debut novel that surprised me for its profundity.

Lucy, the narrator, is a thirty-eight-year-old PhD student working in her Arizona college library and trying to expound a groundbreaking theory about the gaps in Sappho’s poetry. After she breaks up with her cheating boyfriend (and breaks his nose), she agrees to spend a summer dog-sitting for her yoga entrepreneur sister in Venice Beach, California while she undertakes therapy for the twin problems of low self-esteem and love addiction. Here she meets a collection of freaks with their own issues – “a multiheaded hydra of desperation” – including a British pal who ends up in a psychiatric hospital. Lucy’s nameless angst is part depression, part being conflicted over having children, and part existential crisis (it’s interesting to keep track of the use of the words “emptiness” [appears nine times] and “nothingness” [appears 57 times!], as well as variations on “mother” and “emotion”).

Now, if you know one thing about this book, it’s that there’s hot merman sex. So yes, after some Internet dating disasters Lucy meets Theo, whom she assumes is a late-night swimmer who just really likes hanging out on the rocks; eventually she realizes he’s a merman with fully working male anatomy and a dedication to pleasing a woman. But because we only know what’s happening from Lucy’s perspective, I wondered if we can even trust that Theo exists. Maybe this is actually an exercise in erotic wish fulfillment, and he represents the depths of one’s self and/or giving oneself over to what has been repressed. In finally resisting him, she’s resisting a self-willed death. At the least, the relationship with him is a means of examining possession and vulnerability and asking whether those have to equate to masculinity and femininity, respectively.

Another, unrelated spoiler point: if you’re one of those people who don’t like picking up a book that has a dog as a major character because you’re worried about what’s going to happen to it … yeah, be worried.

Ultimately, this novel is about “the prison of the body” and choosing which of the different siren voices calling us we’ll listen to. I found it outrageous but rewarding. I’ve got one last thing to say, though: Unless you’re over 70 and talking about my cat, I really don’t want to ever see the word “pussy” again.

Favorite lines:

a description of Jamie, her ex: “the chin disappearing into a soufflé of neck meat”

Theo to Lucy: “You’re like a little death. […] You’re gloomy yet charming. I like it.” – add in something about the oversexed nature and that could be a good description for this book.

I am pretty disappointed here, this was meant to be a romance. its marketed as a romance. but it reads as women's fiction. I don't think this will be for everyone, I love all the Merman aspect <3 but anyways I really enjoyed it, I honestly wasn't to sure what I was going to expect. I love the cover and the bizarreness of this story.

This book was a puzzle to me. It was both sad and hilarious, and it disturbed me at times, mainly because of the main character Lucy and the ending but overall I couldn't help but like it.

A mixed reading experience. What I didn't like - the whole merman thing just seemed silly and an attempt to be quirky. What I liked - Lucy's real insecurities and failures and her realationship with her sister.

The Pisces is The Shape of Water meets Wetlands by way of Fifty Shades of Grey. Absolute filth of the highest order.

#fishlife

It’s disturbing, bizarre, sickening, obscene, awkward and completely hilarious, I was laughing my fins off whilst reading certain parts.

#getwet

I’m giving this book 5 stars purely because I had so much fun reading it, it is so wacky and original and brave and unique and all the wonderful things.

#waterworks

Can John Waters please hurry up and turn this into a film? Kthanksbye!!

#fishf**ker

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 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 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.

This is an odd book, in some ways very good and in others slightly weird. It certainly kept me reading to the end, anyway.

Lucy, the central character and a 38-year-old librarian, is a car crash – or perhaps more accurately a car out of control – colliding with all sorts of people and their lives. She moves from Phoenix to Venice Beach, the American one, to help out her sister, Annika, who is worried about her following the breakup of her relationship with a man called Jamie while, coincidentally, needing a dog sitter.

Lucy is also struggling to complete a thesis on the works, or rather the gaps in the works, of the classical poet Sappho. Her nonsensical premise is that we can understand the poems better by the gaps where they have been lost over time which she wants to treat as intentional erasures. However, it then becomes clearer that gaps and spaces are quite significant in Lucy’s life particularly in respect of relationships.

She is brutally self-destructive, she wishes she had married Jamie but she is the one who wanted a different kind of relationship. When they split up she is first happy, then sad and then hysterical. As she works through a catalogue of men, mostly highly unsuitable, she repeats the pattern, first intrigued and then at the first hint of affection, stability or longevity she goes into destruct mode. She likes being on the edge of falling in love but doesn’t like being there.

Alongside her story, we also hear about her women’s group led by Dr Jude, think lost causes and desperate cases, with parallel tales of their inability to make permanent, loving relationships with men who are bad choices, shiftless and, sometimes, probably quite nice! A major theme of the novel is how these various women need sex and men but constantly find themselves in the empty spaces, like the gaps in Sappho’s work, between relationships. It doesn’t end well for them with suicide attempts, self-hatred and self-pity but it makes for entertainment of a sort as they report the disastrous failings arising from their dating sites, hangups about tennis coaches and toy boys and worse.

The book takes a turn when Lucy meets Theo, initially an attractive night swimmer but then a merman. Things are looking good for Lucy and Theo apart from some obvious problems in developing a full and exotic relationship with a large fish but they have their moments until it starts to appear that Theo would actually like Lucy to join him at the bottom of the sea which would seemingly involve her being dead!

Lucy finally decides against this but not before she has killed her sister’s diabetic dog with tranquilizer abuse and neglect. It is telling that she can’t even manage this relationship without messing it up. She is clearly a fish out of water herself!

By the end of the book not a lot is resolved. She has decided to rewrite her thesis as a kind of narrative, filling in Sappho’s gaps but has lost her funding to complete it and has returned to her sister’s house where she does not appear to be all that welcome. There isn’t really any sense of a positive resolution for her.

What makes her character interesting is that she isn’t just pumped full of low self esteem like Eleanor Oliphant or incompetent in making relationships but she is something much worse – as well as being clinically depressed, of course. She says unpleasant things to people, derides her friends and leaves one of her group to attempt suicide as she has a date to look forward to. Its intriguing though for the reader wondering where this will all end and you don’t really expect it to be quite so wet!

The book is funny in a black, sardonic way and visceral in its description of her encounters. I’m not quite sure who I’d want to recommend it to and I think most book clubs would struggle but it is an interesting and plausible read about a woman on the edge or, possibly, half way over!

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 is available and men isn'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.

Holy Graphic Merman Sex, Batman!
Looking back now I’m not sure what drew me to this book, I should have looked a little closer because there was enough beyond the Piscean erotica that should have warned me to stay away. I blame the wonderful cover.
I am rather tired of the“neurotic young woman disintegrates over a man” trope. I know. It happens. Love is tough and relationships can be a bitch but this rigmarole in which young women are totally unable to cope with any aspect of life and that this failure is amusing (even ironically) is really starting to grate on me. It's probably unsurprising then that the post-Girls humour of the book consistently fell flat for me.
Lucy’s long-time dissertation is going nowhere and it’s easy to see why, her premise is nowhere near strong enough to hold up a PhD thesis. I found myself thinking that her supervisors would surely have serious questions to answer about allowing something so weak to continue so long, particularly as it is apparently funded. Because that’s what I should have been focusing on, the procedures of a fictional university and whether they are stringent enough. Needless to say, the totally unnecessary pseudo-intellectualism of this aspect of the story was infuriating, if you want to write mermaid porn then just write it, don’t feel the need to justify it with half-hearted nods at Sappho and Homer.
Speaking of mermaid porn…
The sex is extremely explicit, both between humans and inter-species coupling and that is just not for me and I should have prepared myself better but it often seemed that the breaking of taboos was so overt and drew attention to itself no much that any power there might have been in tackling traditional areas of disgust was lost. It read like a checklist of taboo and illicit sexual practices only loosely held together by the rest of the story. I would have been far more prepared to go along with this if she had properly tackled the issues I assume she was raising with these excruciatingly embarrassing encounters i.e. taboos attached to the female body, body-shaming, male entitlement and female subordination in sex but they were merely hinted at, the focus was always on the sex itself.
In a way this was a real shame because (despite my earlier irritation with the relationship theme) far and away the best writing emerged when she did delve deeper. Lucy’s stint in therapy throws her into the path of several other women struggling with issues of intimacy, love and relationships and while I could have managed without her snide commentary on her fellow travellers she’s set up as an unlikeable character so at least it was consistent. Her relationship with Claire, a separated woman with children, when they address the depression that lies at the root of her sexual neuroses shows what Broder’s writing can do. Their relationship is the only one that shows real nuance in their discussions of relationships and what is really going on in their heads and hearts. It is rendered with compassion and sensitivity without losing the frankness that is the hallmark of Broder's frank, assertive style. Had this aspect been more evident in other parts of the book I could have rated it higher.

A very bold and intense novel which doesn't shy away from darkness, sexual explicitly or unpleasantness.

Weird, unique and erotic, this was such a strange story that perfectly captured so many mental health issues. You’ll either love it or hate it.

I was given this book in exchange for an honest opinion.This book is no fairy story so please take any thoughts of once upon a time type ideals and discard. It takes a certain reader to enjoy this, unfortunately I'm not it. I continued to read it begrudgingly hoping I would feel some kind of enjoyment or liking of the lead character. It didn't happen. We initially see Lucy who is pushing 40 and still at university doing a thesis she's been working on for years and it not going anywhere. She splits from her boyfriend whom she didn't want to begin with but once the realisation of him leaving had sunk in she became the bunny boiler from hell breaking his nose in the process and needing to go to therapy to avoid pressing charges. She takes up an offer from her sister to look after her house and dog (who is like her sisters child and also ill). Once there, she goes to a group for people like her. she judges every single person at this group, befriending two and becoming quite attached to her sisters dog.
I do not like Lucy. Can't stand the woman. She has some redeeming qualities -shes brutally honest with herself and to others however she's a definite all about me person. She abandons everyone that shows her genuine affection or those needing help just to have sex with essentially strangers.
There's also events in the book I never wanted to have mental imagery of. We shall call these poo pulling and blood smearing. I understand she thinks she has issues but jeez she needs more help than a group. She needs a doctor. She has a couple of tinder dates, one of them involving a hotel toilet before meeting the mystery Merman.
When it comes to Mr Merman we see this relationship progress at a rapid pace. She knew nothing about this random swimmer before she's kissing him or he's all over her.
She also describes him more than once as feminine, for example smelling like a vagina. She's totally fine with this by the way. None of his big reveal seemed to shock her. Oh and mermen in this book have genitals the fish starts after. Just incase you were wondering. I know I wasn't.
Overall the book was a quick read but left me feeling almost angry toward Lucy at the end when I think I was meant to feel sympathy. We see the hearthrob turn into the villain and I could help feeling that she essentially brought it in herself. The book is bit like mixing Samantha from sex and the city (not more me me me and less funny,) with Mr Christian Grey as a fish man hybrid and I imagine this would be the result. Now after writing this I feel mostly disappointed at I was expecting something more meaningful and loving than what I got. The book cover is brilliant though, but you should never judge a book by it as a found out here.

I also read The Pisces by Melissa Broder, whose name you may recognise from So Sad Today. (I’d heard of the site, but haven’t followed it.) The novel is narrated by Lucy, a 38-year-old PhD candidate whose life has stagnated and who, on a whim, suggests she and her boyfriend of thirteen years break up. It takes. After a break-down, she goes to house- and dog-sit for her sister, where she joins a therapy group, goes on Tinder dates, and strikes up an affair with a merman. Um, yeah. It’s part examination of depression and attachment, part erotic fiction. I loved its energy early on, but it felt long (even at 220 pages) and, towards the end, it spent a lot of time wrapping up answers to questions I didn’t have. It’s released on 1st May from Hogarth Press in the USA and 3rd May from Bloomsbury in the UK.

Fucked up humans, a merman, Dominic the diabetic dog, Sappho… Life certainly is a box of chocolates for Lucy, a PhD student who breaks up with her boyfriend and heads to LA to dog-sit for her sister for a couple of months. There she joins a love addiction therapy group of women, swipes right on some dickheads and meets a sexy dude hanging out my the rocks.

I loved The Pisces because it’s so much about the reality we inhabit with all its weird connected disconnection and so much about the fantasy that we create to avoid that reality. It’s brutal in places, hilarious in others and sometimes it’s so close to the bone you have to put it down. Well, it’s all that plus hot merman sex.

Bananas and beautiful in the very best way, like a Miranda July film. Somebody make this into a film.

I absolutely adored this book. I hadn't read any of the descriptions or the blurb when I started it so I was not prepared for some of the plot developments (merman erotica is new to me) but it made it all the better - and somehow did not feel out of place in such a novel. It touches on so many of the paraxodical and existential questions of life and at some points I felt I could have written it myself - the search for the antidote to loneliness and a way to find meaning amongst depression, abandonment and death. It is tongue in cheek and at times absolutely hilarious; an absolute rollercoaster of a read and one I found impossible to put down.

Sex and the Fishy!

Our heroine Lucy breaks up with her boyfriend and goes to visit her sister in LA. She is in charge of the apartment and her sister's beloved dog - what could go wrong?

Lucy joins a therapy group to try and address her love and neediness issues. The group sessions provide humour as Lucy decided that compared to most of the other members she is doing fine. I laughed at Lucy's attempts to get up to speed with current dating requirements, the image of her clutching a pack of frozen beans to her poor waxed pubis had me giggling.

Having decided that Tinder is not going to come up with the goods Lucy takes to hanging out on the beach and here she meets Theo. He seems a little shy as he stays in the sea, turns out he is a merman. Of course he is.

Well then rather than being a little wary as suggested by her therapy group Lucy embarks on a passionate affair with a fishman. Funnily enough the beloved dog is suspicious of the merman so Lucy tranquilises the dog. Apparently mermen are quite happy with period sex (I was worried about sharks - or is that just me?). The sex is a right old romp, 'Fuck me with your triton' is one of my all time favourite lines.

However as we all know from the fairy tales, mermen aren't all they are cracked up to be. Theo turns out to be a little bit too needy himself, perhaps he has lived on Venice Beach for too long?

Perhaps not the book to lend to your mother, but an entertaining erotic fish tail (get it?!).

Hip, smart, incisive, neurotic, sexually-explicit, oddly romantic, gross in places, startlingly intellectual in others - Broder's novel is absolutely contemporary and while it reaches out to the work of Lena Dunham and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, amongst others, it also has a unique personality and individuality of its own.

Our cast-adrift heroine is 38 and in between Tinder hook-ups, the women's group meetings, and agonising about her lost boyfriend, she's writing a long-overdue PhD thesis about the spaces in Sappho's poetry - and this image of nothingness and how we decide to fill it is what gives the book both a kind of coherence as well as some emotional and intellectual heft.

Into this hiatus comes Theo - a beautiful merman! - and it's to Broder's credit that the whimsy fits in right along with the other elements of Lucy's life; indeed, musing about the Homeric sirens of Greek mythology as mermaids, ties Theo more thematically to everything else than we might expect.

With due attention to the female body in all its physicality - from sex to sexual infections, from pee to menstrual blood - Broder is bold and sometimes dark in her refusal to be 'nice'. I enjoyed this hugely both for its re-writing of the tropes of chick-lit and its cognate genres of 'women's writing', as well as its sheer exuberant delight in storytelling. Who knew mixing modern female existential angst with a sexy merman would be so potent? Brava, Ms Broder - I'm putting my money on this as one to watch in 2018. Oh, and such a wonderful offbeat cover!