I do research in the field of environmental speculative fiction, and the premise of this novel had me intensely excited as something which might offer unique and interesting insight into thinking otherwise. Unfortunately I felt that the novel ultimately was white/Global North-centric in such a way that it undid some of the possibilities it might have otherwise offered. Characters like Margaret, a white expat who has been living in KL for fifteen years but doesn't speak Malay, Tamil, or Mandarin reflects on the city's transition to a coastal one with a kind of plasticity that feels sociopathic in the very real live-laugh-love kind of way--sure it was a disaster for some, but the city was fine and now there are birds nearby and the bridge she drives over has a great view. This calmness and sense of new-normality differs sharply from her intense distress and revulsion towards the land fish and also some furries at the mall, and almost feels like a parody--only there do not seem to be any climate refugees, any Malaysian perspectives on the losses felt as roughly 40km of land washed away and flooded, any real sense that anyone felt anything until the fish showed up. Even if it Stubbs truly intends this as a critique of the Margarets of the world (and I'm not convinced she does) she fails to accomplish it, ultimately too heavily reproducing the erasure of environmental racism and climate catastrophe's disproportional impact.

I reaaaally wanted to love this book. It sounded right up my street - lighter-hearted cli-fi? Sign me up!

Unfortunately, 'The Fish' is a rather meagre thing. For starters, it's shorter than average for a novel. More like an overlong novella. But my main issue is the fact that the plot is divided into three strands, with three sets of main characters - and Cathy and Ephie's strand was far more fleshed out than the other two. It was as if the author didn't really like the other characters, nor did she want to spend much time thinking about their inner/outer lives (most of all with Ricky and Kyle, who I kept getting mixed up). I just couldn't understand the point of including them. Their character arcs had no resolution - they just... stopped.

I've given the book two stars for the quirky premise of fish going weird, and the vaguely interesting science woven around this, but that's it. I strongly disagree with one quote for this book stating that it is a "powerful exploration of the devastation climate change wreaks on ordinary lives" - mainly because there's very little "devastation" (except for one character who has an accident) and the backdrop of climate change was woefully inaccurate and underdone. Land-walking fish I could swallow, but given that this is in the near future when "half the coastlines are gone" - something that will be apocalyptic, if/when it happens, the characters actually suffer almost no disruption to their lives. People still talk about flying to other countries. There is still coffee and chocolate. There is a disquieting insulation to this book, in its total blindness to the devastation that so many people on the planet would be experiencing, unseen by the lucky, dare I say privileged, characters.

(With thanks to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review).

Thank you to Netgalley and Fairlight Books for giving me early access to this incredible debut by Joanne Stubbs!

"The fish" is a climate fiction told from the point of view of 4 different characters spread across the globe (UK, Malaysia and New Zealand). Although definitely not action packed, passed the 20% mark, I thought this was an absolute page turner.
Set in the near future, the world is shaken by bizarre happenings: incredible storms come out of nowhere, ravaging everything around them, some species of fish start walking, starfish are found everywhere on coastal towns.. The environment evolving so rapidly causes a palette of different but violent reactions.

This timely tale explores how different people try to cope with sudden and important change to their world and daily lives. There are mentions of quickly forgotten pandemics and although this is not the focus of the story, I think it really resonates with everything we've all been going through lately.

The fish is a very satisfying and innovative story, unlike anything I've ever read before!

The story is set in a near future in which climate change is already very visible. In particular, many coastal strips have disappeared under water. A city like Kuala Lumpur is now located near the sea. Furthermore, the world suffers giant storms in places where they are currently still unimaginable. In that dystopian setting, at a certain moment several such storms appear worldwide almost at the same time. When they clear up, sea creatures have washed up on the beaches everywhere. But it doesn't stop there: the animals move further inland. Starfish cling to kitchen windows, fish find their way into the houses through the bathtub drain, etc. Things go even worse when people discover that those sea creatures are poisonous, even when touched. And that's just the first phenomenon that pops up...

The book has plot lines in Great Britain, Malaysia and New Zealand. Joanne Stubbs has visited the places in her book and describes things from her own experience. This is not limited to the "tourist information". The author extends this by incorporating some local customs and language. In each place, one character receives focus. With Ricky, we get to see a New Zealand teenager's vision on climate change and witness how this age group is dealing with it. Cathy is about fifteen years older, married to Ephie, and lives in the south west of GB. Ephie works on marine analysis in a lab and gets swamped with work doing research into the new phenomenon, which means Cathy is often alone in the months after, and is very anxious. Her fears are not only caused by the fish's bizarre behaviour. She is insecure about herself, which makes her very afraid of losing her wife to one of her (presumed) smarter and more beautiful colleagues. Finally, there is Margaret, an American expat in Kuala Lumpur to where she followed her husband. She is in her fifties, trying to make sense of her life as a "wife of" in a foreign country. Among other things, she is involved in the local Church, and visits brothels to talk about her faith. The fish that suddenly appear make her doubt the meaning of it all.

The idea of fish coming ashore is interesting. After reading the book description, I immediately expected it would evolve towards an exciting confrontation between mankind and fish. Yet the first half of this relatively thin book is mainly about getting to know the three main characters. The part describes relationship problems that characters experience, with no more than a hint of climate problems in between. There is no action, the author mainly focuses on the emotions of the characters. That in itself is not unrealistic because even if your garden is permanently flooded or dried out, life continues and you have no choice than to adapt.

The main characters don't really stand out above the other people they interact with. Chapters bear the name of the main character, but it would have made equal sense to use the names of the cities or countries. Cathy is the exception. Chapters about her are the only ones told in first person. There is no reason to, and it appeared to me that the author was closer to Cathy than to the other characters, and found her view more important. She's developed more in depth and I learned more about her than about the other two protagonists combined.

The author pays a remarkable amount of attention to details. Small gestures characters make during their interaction with others are often mentioned, and small actions are extensively described. A tie, for example, is not simply pulled, but is pulled in one fluid movement. Stubbs often adds colour, smell or sound details of everyday objects being used. It's clear that some writing course techniques were extensively applied. It gives the story depth and does therefore not disturb, but it's okay to leave a shoe just a shoe every now and then without any more details. Details are sometimes simply irrelevant. It's likely that by the time Kuala Lumpur is having its own coast, every car will be electrical, so there is no point in mentioning explicitly that a car is electrical.

When those damned fish finally appear halfway through, the writer limits the description of the phenomenon from the three points of view, as if it were a side-plot. The relational tensions between these characters and their surroundings keep being the main story, which surprised me. Those tensions may take a higher flight due to the stress caused by what is going on, but the book doesn't elaborate on that a lot. Cathy is again the exception. Climate fiction has become increasingly popular over the last years and I've read a fair amount of such stories. I quite often find climate fiction to be slow books, which I don't mind at all. Even then, The Fish might very well be the slowest paced book in this genre I have read so far, and the least focused on the effects of climate change. The climate story is only a means, a stepping stone to describe how people cope with change and moments of stress in general. It's perfectly possible to replace climate by covid and write exactly the same book. It's not a bad book at all, but based on the book description I expected something more speculative.

Unfortunately I really struggled with this one. The concept drew me in, sounded so intriguing and unusual. It was such a good idea.

However, it was marred for me by the writing. It could just be that the style didn’t click with me, but I found it quite clumsy. It didn’t flow. The dialogue seemed really awkward and not reflective of how people talk.

I commend the imagination of the story, but the writing made me unmotivated to pick it up.

I greatly enjoyed this book, and I hadn't quite heard of it before. Just saw the beautiful cover and had to request. It's the first climate fiction book, and the anxieties the author felt for the climate leapt off the page, I found myself dreading the eventual calamity that is soon going to happen if the human race doesn't change its ways.
A must read book.

*Sent to me to review*

I can't explain how much I loved this book. Joanne Stubbs' 'The Fish' is the first climate fiction novel I've read, and I'd hesitate to describe it as climate fiction because she manages to capture the emotion, anxiety and ignorance that anyone who has worried about the environment has either felt or witnessed.

The story is seen from the perspective of Cathy & Ephie in Cornwall, Margaret in Kuala Lumpur and Ricky and Kyle in New Zealand. It takes you on a journey which sees people from scientific backgrounds, religious backgrounds and those viewing the climate catastrophe from youthful perspectives, and shows just how much people struggle to adapt to the changing climate, even in the sea creatures seem to be.

"The cat knows something we don't... they have plenty of wild instinct left in them."

It echoes all too well the reactions we see in real life to climate change, from those overcome with anxiety and worry about how to help, to those who simply want to ignore what is happening, even when it is right in front of their eyes. In particular, Margaret's worry toward the situation and her husband's total apathy, as well as his mentioning of their gate that will keep everything out is a harrowing mirror of the people who continue as normal and think that it will never impact them. **SPOILERS AHEAD ** The irony is that it is Margaret who ends up losing her life to the impacts of the rapid and uncontrollable environmental change they endure.

For a relatively short book, I have been left reeling and emotional about the state of our world, and knowing that if by some bacterial mutation chance, the fish literally started walking out of the sea, we still probably wouldn't change our ways.

5/5