A review by mayareads
The Pisces by Melissa Broder

challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Can we ever escape our obsessions? How do you choose reality when fantasy is so much more appealing?

Lucy, the titular Pisces, does this thing where she projects narratives onto everyone else in her life. She constructs elaborate fantasies where she is the main character, and then inevitably is crushed by the shame and disappointment when reality does not follow the narrative she chose for it. She is a magnificent unreliable narrator.

The pisces is a book about that process: the way we write the story of other people and how they see us in our heads and then feel blindsided when those narratives are entirely fictional. How do we choose to accept the mundane when the fantasy promised something sublime?

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