THE PISCES by MELISSA BRODER

Synopsis

 

<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.

My Review

“These things never happened but always are.”

An instant classic. How to describe a story that is smart, incredibly funny, profoundly sad and highly erotic? Oh yes, and there’s a merman, too! I love this author!

Honestly, I have been having a hard time letting go of Lucy and Theo. A book that mixes humor and eroticism AND Greek mythology? A THOUSAND YESSES TO THE PISCES!! Lucy is despondent (but still neurotically funny) after a messy break-up with her long-time boyfriend. She leaves Phoenix where she has been working on a dissertation for years, to travel to L.A. to dog-sit for her sister Annika for the summer.

Lucy is forced to enter group therapy (which is hilarious and tragic at the same time) and is not really supposed to be dating yet at all. So of course because she has an addictive personality she immediately throws herself into the online dating pool with sometimes disastrous results.

“I came to know and love into another kind of stranger: a physical manifestation of time and letting oneself go eclipsing both the stranger and the honeybear until they all but disappeared. I felt irate. How dare he not give a fuck? What a luxury, the luxury of a man. The luxury of someone who looked at the ravages of time and went,

“Eh.”

Lucy’s sister’s house is on the beach and one night Lucy encounters a gorgeous surfer boy named Theo. He only comes out at night when she is sitting on the rocks, looking out into the wild Pacific Ocean.

“I looked out at the ocean. It was as though I hadn’t noticed it before, or hadn’t wanted to see it. I was scared of its wild ambivalence, so powerful and amorphous, like the depression itself. It didn’t give a fuck about me. It could eat me without even knowing.”

Lucy may be despondent but she is still funny and sexy and very desirable. It is hard to adequately describe the hilarity and poignancy of Melissa Broder’s writing but every single page was a delight. Lucy becomes completely entranced by gorgeous but elusive Theo:

“His is chest was hairless, and I noticed that the color of his nipples matched perfectly his lips, like pencil erasers. He looked like he was twenty-one, at most. If this was death then death was hot.”

Lucy still hooks up with men she meets online but is strangely drawn back to Theo and their deep connection. She eventually comes to accept who he is after several passionate kisses and much conversation. And who he really is doesn’t seem so unbelievable after all.

“Was there any wildness anywhere, or was all of it inhabited by tech dudes now, juice places and blow-dry bars? Had anything been left undiscovered, or did the Internet snatch it all up the moment it existed? Nothing remained untouched. Or maybe some things weren’t completely mapped out yet and there was still a little room for the mystery. Maybe some strange and beautiful boy could still pop out of the sea and surprise you.”

This book is so funny that I was crying from laughter throughout most of it. Melissa Broder has a magical way with words. I just want to scream from the rooftops for everyone to read this book! Yes it is weird but it is wild and beautiful and life-affirming. And the description of Venice beach life and the L.A. dating scene was hysterically funny and poignant.

“I’m back,” he said. “How have the dates been treating you?”

“Disgusting,” I said.

“Ah, too bad.”

“Are you real?” I asked. He laughed. “I suffer like I’m real. I have wants like I’m real. I fear that I will be unliked or unloved. Men, women, I think that maybe everyone wants the same thing.”

This book is funny, sexy, magical and very, very real. Even though there is a merman. It is about everyone’s quest for love and to be loved. ‘The Pisces’ is absolutely one of my favorite books and not to be missed!!

“I felt the Earth rotating around us, or that we were the planet—spinning on its axis. In my head came a deep buzz of the Earth again and I didn’t know if I was actually humming out loud or if it was all inside me. This is how you exist in the world, I thought. This is how you are alive.”