The Pisces - Hardcover

Broder, Melissa

3.3

29,654 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408890984 ISBN 13: 9781408890981

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing UK, 2018

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LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019 'Of all the books that I read this summer I think this was my absolute favourite . It really blew me away' DOLLY ALDERTON 'Frank, provocative and brilliant' INDEPENDENT 'Utterly mesmerising' TATLER 'Hilarious, poignant, sexy. A brilliant story about why we crave connection and how to find ourselves' ELLE 'Laugh-out-loud funny' i CHOSEN AS A SUMMER READ BY TATLER , THE TIMES , ELLE AND YOU MAGAZINE Lucy has been writing her dissertation for nine years when she and her boyfriend have a dramatic break up. After she hits rock bottom, her sister in Los Angeles insists that Lucy dog-sit for the summer. Staying in a gorgeous house on Venice Beach, Lucy can find little relief from her anxiety - not in the Greek chorus of women in her love addiction therapy group, not in her frequent Tinder excursions, not even in Dominic the dog's easy affection. Everything changes when she becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer while sitting alone on the beach rocks one night. But when Lucy learns the truth about his identity, their relationship, and Lucy's understanding of what love should look like, take a very unexpected turn.

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About the Author:

Melissa Broder is the author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections, including Last Sext. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for poetry, and her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Tin House, Guernica, Fence, The Missouri Review, and others. She writes the 'So Sad Today' column at Vice, the astrology column for Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter, and the 'Beauty and Death' column on Elle.com. She lives in Los Angeles. melissabroder.com / @melissabroder / @sosadtoday

Review:

A novel that has such depth, and so many layers ... If it doesn't make its way onto your list of books to read, then you're probably doing summer wrong * Erotic Review * Broder's expert plotting elides with her lucid view of mental illness to present a satisfying, intelligent conclusion to this bizarrely brilliant tale. What should you be reading this summer? A tragi-comic interspecies love story with undertones of ancient Greek philosophy and sex-positive feminism. Obviously. Literary erotica has never been so odd, or oddly satisfying * The Times * Witty, sharp and painfully insightful ... Looking for a smart summer read? This is it * The Pool * A frank, provocative, and brilliant debut that blends fantasy with realism as Broder examines just how unusual a shape love can take -- The debut novelists to know this year * Independent * Strangely, almost uncomfortably, addictive ... This book appeals to the Bridget Jones in all of us, searching for true love and unhealthily influenced by fairytales. It's a fusion of the fantastical and the real with a sprinkling of the erotic, and is both beautifully written and darkly comic * Stylist * What makes The Pisces an experimental, exciting work is that Ms. Broder manages to knead together the genres of magical realism - Theo, the merman, is always presumed to be real; no apparitions here - and literary erotica, all with a bemused, wry detachment ... In recounting one woman's star-crossed relationship with a folkloric beau, Ms. Broder has crafted a modern-day mythology for women on the verge - if everything on the surface stops making sense, all you need to do is dive deeper * New York Times Book Review * Broder is just as hilarious as she is wrenchingly honest * Elle Book Club * The Pisces convincingly romances the void * NewYorker.com * Broder may be master of the awkward sexual encounter but it turns out she's a dab hand at proper erotica, too ... The Pisces is so much more than fantasy; it's an unflinching exploration of one woman's fragile mental health * Refinery 29 * A peerless combination of heartbreak and horniness, this novel's journey through the surreal throes of desire is a trip you'll want to take again and again -- Alissa Nutting, author of 'Made for Love' No one writes about love like Melissa Broder ... This is a book for every smart person who has made very bad decisions -- Melissa Febos, author of 'Abandon Me' The characters in The Pisces are so finely drawn and palpably real. These are some of the most real, relatable merman sex scenes I have ever read in any book -- Megan Amram, comedian and writer of Parks & Recreation, Silicon Valley and The Good Place This book has my number so hard, I'm waiting for its midnight texts -- Amelia Gray, author of 'Isadora' Broder wraps timeless questions of existence - those that gods and stars have been beseeched to answer for millennia - in the weirdest, sexiest, and most appealing of modern packaging. Brilliant and delightful -- Starred Review * Booklist * Melissa Broder has officially written the modern myth -- Molly Prentiss, author of 'Tuesday Nights in 1980' Honestly, read this book and you'll be totally swept up in its brilliant writing and bizarre premise. You'll never look at the beach in quite the same way -- Unmissable Books to Read This Spring * Stylist * Sappho and Tinder, mermaid porn and nervous breakdowns, the banal and the bananas gloriously litter this uncanny marvel that is pretty impossible to put down -- Porochista Khakpour, author of 'Sick: A Memoir' Fearless writing, merrily mixing Sappho and bikini waxes, Greek myths and self-help, and with the most brutally honest sex scenes I've read in a long time -- Kerry Andrew, composer and author of 'Swansong' This book is for anyone that's wondered where their longing will take them next -- Chelsea Hodson, author of 'Tonight I'm Someone Else' Funny and dark, vicious and tender, The Pisces is a sexy and moving portrait of a woman longing for connection and pleasure in our strange and alienating world. I can't stop thinking about it -- Edan Lepucki, author of Woman No. 17 Bold, virtuosic, addictive, erotic - there is nothing like The Pisces. Between a broken-up Sappho academic and a Venice-beach merman, Melissa Broder miraculously captures everything absurd and pure about falling in love. I have no idea how Broder does it, but I loved every dark and sublime page of it -- Stephanie Danler, author of Bittersweet The Pisces has everything - devastating honesty about love, intimacy and loneliness, tonally perfect writing, propulsive plotting, laugh out loud hilarity, and genuinely hot sex with a merman -- Emily Gould, author of `Friendship' Fearless and perverted, full of desolation and of hope, The Pisces is a novel that delves head on into the many dark, absurd facets of human connection and coping in search of meaning and comes back bearing fantastic flashes of a twisted rom-com surreality only Melissa Broder's gemstone-studded brain could conjure up -- Blake Butler, author of 'There Is No Year' It's hot, it's fantastical, and it's snort-inducingly funny. I can't get enough of this book * Whimn * Melissa Broder lays herself bare but she does so with strength, savvy, and style. Above all, these essays are sad and uncomfortable and their own kind of gorgeous. They reveal so much about what it is to live in this world, right now -- Praise for 'So Sad Today', Roxane Gay If Melissa Broder weren't so fucking funny I would have wept through this entire book. Love, sex, addiction, mental illness and childhood trauma all join hands and dance in a circle, to the tune of Melissa's unmatched wit and dementedly perfect take on this terrifying orb we call home -- Praise for 'So Sad Today', Lena Dunham A triumph of unsettlingly relatable prose -- Praise for 'So Sad Today' * Vanity Fair * Her writing is deeply personal, sophisticated in its wit, and at the same time, devastating ... A portrait of modern day existence told with provocative, irreverent honesty -- Praise for 'So Sad Today' * Nylon * What separates Broder from her confessional cohort, as "filthy" (her word) as her pieces are, is that she doesn't seem to be out to shock, but to survive -- Praise for 'So Sad Today' * Elle *

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