Reviews with content warning for Animal death - The Pisces

The writer is a good writer. The premise is certainly interesting. I love weird books- I really do- but I just couldn’t get past the MC’s selfishness and lack of care for living creatures. I get that the book is a metaphor for love addiction/ depression/ loneliness/ mental illness, but I was left at the end feeling like “what was the point of this?” The concept was unique and cool, the MC was easy to stay with, but I was really upset by the ending. I know people who are horrible exist, but at this point in my life, I didn’t enjoy reading about one. 3.5 because the writing style and prose is really good and at times very funny. I was just too disturbed by the animal cruelty. That includes

merman schlong. I could very much handle the schlong but dog neglect? No thank you.

Content Warnings

kristin_boren's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

the dog dies

I think without that spoiler I might have been more inclined to give it 5 stars. I do generally like a weird book about horrible characters. Maybe Lucy was just a little too selfish than I could handle. Writing was excellent though, I'll certainly read more from Melissa Broder.

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lasagleje's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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sidekicksam's review against another edition

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funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Faye has recently broken up with her boyfriend of ten years, is at a dead end with her PhD on Sappho and doesn't know what to do with her life anymore. Her sister offers her the opportunity to get out of the desert (Phoenix) and stay at her house at Venice Beach for a while, so she can attend a self-help group while also minding her sister's dog while they're on holiday.

What follows, is the funniest, and in my opinion best unhinged woman story I have read so far. I loved Faye's unlikeable character, the poor choices she makes and her utter deadpan way of dealing with the people around her, but all the while staying relatable to a degree.

(Always relatable *to a degree*, because honestly, who tries to finger out the shit out of their ass before having anal sex with a stranger on a regular basis? Exactly)

Faye is lonely, desperate and apathic, and it gets her in the weirdest situations when she's dating. I'm happy to say I don't share a lot of experiences in the dating field with Faye, but still, some dates, decisions and feelings were so relatable!!!

After the midway point, when things get totally unhinged as Faye

starts an affair with a merman with an enormous dick (and a fine ass apparently because in this universe, the tail starts below the ass) (I still don't really know how to imagine it myself honestly),

I was fascinated by how the book both becomes more interesting and also loses my interest. Perhaps because the dynamics with her mythical lover are explored so superficially, or because the book ending wraps up too fast in my opinion.

If you like weird, highly descriptive and unhinged literature, this is a book you wan to read. There were a lot of bits that made me scrunch up my face in public and even exclaim at times (because some things are really graphic or just nasty), so be warned.

Some quotes I've highlighted that might indicate how much I vibed with the writing style:

I have always felt it would be good to be a man. Not only have I always wanted to have my own dick - just to walk around feeling that weight between my legs, that power - but I have longed to escape the time pressures that my body has put on me.

Salsa dancing - now that was the kiss of death, the evidence that Sara wasn't doing quite as well as she claimed. Who salsa danced? Salsa dancing was the last stop on the suicide express.

I wanted to be like, Look, this is what you get when you fuck a quy with a wife. This is what polyamory people are like. You are never going to get to have the whole person. But I kept my mouth shut. Who was I to say anything? I'd just fucked a guy with a girlfriend on a public floor and wanted him to declare his undying love.

"What is it about dying that scares you the most? Are you afraid of having regrets?"
"No," I said. "I think it's really the physical process. Like, the suffocation. I'm so scared to be suffocating and panicking. [...]
"It might be scary for a moment," he said. "Maybe for a few minutes. But then, from what I've seen, you are very free."
"Maybe," I said. "But it's the fear before the freedom that I'm scared of. If I could just go to sleep - just like that, go to sleep and never wake up - I would do that anytime. I would do it tonight. But I'm scared to be conscious while it's happening."

Once in a while the scent of his bottom half would waft up and it smelled like a fish market - not exactly dead fish, the way my fish-tank emergenct had smelled in my youth, but it smelled like blood, the ocean, shit, seaweed... a likke like pussy, actually.

As we kissed, I imagined eating his tail with garlic butter.

I read somewhere that it takes women one and a half fucks to get attached - that it happens in the middle of the second fuck.

"I have my period," I said, dejected.
"I know," he said.
"What do you mean you know?" I laughed.
"I just know. I know because I intuited it. I could feel it. I'm in sync with your vagina. We're always in contact," he said.

Were my incessant thoughts and feelings just a mechanism to escape the nothingness, or was the nothingness comprised of my thoughts and feelings themselves? Was there another way out besides out? It didn't matter now.

Content Warnings

seventhswan's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

The plot of this book was absurd, and not at all queer (which, fair enough, it wasn't explicitly marketed as such, I'd just got it in my head that it would be after reading Milk Fed and seeing Sappho on the blurb). Although it was well-written and the characters were interesting to read, it was just a little too strange for me in places. I most enjoyed the final few chapters where the story took on a more horror-like tone - I think I might have got on with the rest better if it had committed harder to this earlier on.

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