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meganec202 's review for:
The Pisces
by Melissa Broder
dark
funny
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-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
(AUDIOBOOK)
“I believe in love more than anything. But I think I am very bad at it.”
The Pisces is a deeply reflective study on the modern woman's obsession with loving and being loved and sex and sexuality. The book designates that each of these elements are wholly separate, disparate Entities that can make or break us; but this is brought about through the eyes of a generally unlikable-yet-relatable FMC and in a world where the average Man is so distant from the female experience, he might as well be a mythical creature.
I was captivated by this story. While I wouldn't consider myself love or sex addicted, the parts that make up the whole of Lucy's id are so familiar to myself and, I assume, women at large. An excellent example, from early in the book: “I had felt, for a long time, that if I started crying I would not stop—that if I finally ripped, there would be nothing to stop my guts from falling out. I was scared of what might come out of me: the things I would see, what others would see. I was scared the feelings would eat me. Feelings were a luxury of the young, or someone much stronger than me—someone more at ease with being human. It was too late for tears. I was to keep going, to move forward on the same track in spite of life’s unsatisfying lifeness. I was not to ask where I was going or if it was where I really wanted to go. I was not to ask if I was actually going anywhere at all. But now, somehow, I was sobbing.”
Melissa Broder so eloquently will lay out a reality, like Lucy's inability or unwillingness to be a women who cries, and we agree and we see her and we feel it... and then she's sobbing. And we, too, see this and feel this. The combination of realities and perversions and a switch-flip to a mythical reality is done so frequently, that this book reads like life- unexpected and surprising and familiar, like the waves of the sea. A constant coming and going that soothes and overwhelms.
A FEW MORE QUOTES I WANT ON HAND:
“Was it ever real? The way we felt about another person? Or was it always a projection of something we needed or wanted regardless of them?”
“I, myself, had a very complicated relationship with emptiness, blankness, nothingness. Sometimes I wanted only to fill it, frightened that if I didn’t it would eat me alive or kill me. But sometimes I longed for total annihilation in it—a beautiful, silent erasure. A desire to be vanished.”
“I loved him too. But at the same time, who knew what love was exactly? I still didn't have it figured out. I remembered what Dr. Jude had said. The question is not what is love, but is it really love I'm looking for?”
“I believe in love more than anything. But I think I am very bad at it.”
The Pisces is a deeply reflective study on the modern woman's obsession with loving and being loved and sex and sexuality. The book designates that each of these elements are wholly separate, disparate Entities that can make or break us; but this is brought about through the eyes of a generally unlikable-yet-relatable FMC and in a world where the average Man is so distant from the female experience, he might as well be a mythical creature.
I was captivated by this story. While I wouldn't consider myself love or sex addicted, the parts that make up the whole of Lucy's id are so familiar to myself and, I assume, women at large. An excellent example, from early in the book: “I had felt, for a long time, that if I started crying I would not stop—that if I finally ripped, there would be nothing to stop my guts from falling out. I was scared of what might come out of me: the things I would see, what others would see. I was scared the feelings would eat me. Feelings were a luxury of the young, or someone much stronger than me—someone more at ease with being human. It was too late for tears. I was to keep going, to move forward on the same track in spite of life’s unsatisfying lifeness. I was not to ask where I was going or if it was where I really wanted to go. I was not to ask if I was actually going anywhere at all. But now, somehow, I was sobbing.”
Melissa Broder so eloquently will lay out a reality, like Lucy's inability or unwillingness to be a women who cries, and we agree and we see her and we feel it... and then she's sobbing. And we, too, see this and feel this. The combination of realities and perversions and a switch-flip to a mythical reality is done so frequently, that this book reads like life- unexpected and surprising and familiar, like the waves of the sea. A constant coming and going that soothes and overwhelms.
A FEW MORE QUOTES I WANT ON HAND:
“Was it ever real? The way we felt about another person? Or was it always a projection of something we needed or wanted regardless of them?”
“I, myself, had a very complicated relationship with emptiness, blankness, nothingness. Sometimes I wanted only to fill it, frightened that if I didn’t it would eat me alive or kill me. But sometimes I longed for total annihilation in it—a beautiful, silent erasure. A desire to be vanished.”
“I loved him too. But at the same time, who knew what love was exactly? I still didn't have it figured out. I remembered what Dr. Jude had said. The question is not what is love, but is it really love I'm looking for?”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Death, Drug abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Forced institutionalization, Vomit, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis