The Pisces

By: Melissa Broder

Narrated by: Isabella Inchbald

Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019

Profoundly modern, deeply disturbed and darkly comic, The Pisces is about heartbroken PhD student who over one summer falls in dangerous, ecstatic love with a merman. 

Lucy, staying in a beautiful home overlooking Venice Beach, can find no peace from her misery - not in therapy, not in Tinder hookups, not in her sister's dog's unquestioning devotion, 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.... 

Pairing neurotic hilarity with pulse-racing carnality and fierce feminism, The Pisces is hot, bothered and unforgettable. Traversing the lines between fantasy and reality, it explores the questions of how and why we stay alive. This fairy-tale romance with a merman could just be the sanest and most human novel you listen to all year. 

©2018 Melissa Broder (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

Disappointing

I struggled with the protagonist as I found her irresponsible and completely self absorbed. Her lack of care for the animal in her charge was disturbing. I felt more for the dog than I did for her.

Not too sure...

This book was...interesting. In chapter 12 the dialogue is tedious as there was a repetition of two words to move the conversation along, said and asked. Maybe it wouldn't have gotten on my nerves too much if I had read the book, rather than listened to it. There are more descriptive words to use in the English language than repeating said and asked after every other snippet of dialogue.

Funny and insightful in an eerie fascinating way

Maybe a bit disturbing at times and with more graphic sex than is needed, but still the best read of my summer.

just bad

really didn't enjoy this. strange mix of graphic sex and internal stream of consciousness thoughts, magical realism and Greek myth metaphors.

unusual book

an unusual book which I didn't particularly like as the protagonist is unlikeable, coarse, cynical and tragic. however it does shed light on the dependency of women on men and how incredibly insecure they are. the story arc with Theo is clever , though in itself really weird