The Pisces (Broder) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Melissa Broder writes about the void. She approaches the great existential subjects—emptiness, loneliness, meaninglessness, death and boyfriends—as if they were a collection of bad habits. That's what makes her writing so funny. And so sad.… Broder carries us along, even as we shake our heads. The book…has great momentum, like waves hitting the rocks.… Broder's preoccupations—and sometimes her prose—mirror her essays and poetry and tweets, but she has also allowed her social-media style and substance to blossom. The Pisces is part satire, part fairy tale and, sometimes jarringly, part meditation on addiction. Lucy longs for what is unattainable in life and so is drawn to the soothing darkness of death. She is an idealist who can't help noticing that nothing is ideal.
Cathleen Schine - New York Times Book Review -

A page turner of a novel.… The Pisces is many things: a jaunt in a fabulous voice, a culture critique of Los Angeles, an explicit tour of all kinds of sex (both really good and really bad).… Broder’s voice has a funny, frank Amy Schumer feel to it, injected with moments of a Lydia Davis-type abstraction.
Washington Post


It’s a knife-tip dissection of 21st-century anomie, and its clear-sighted depiction of muddy-headed people makes for bracing reading—like a dip in the freezing, salty sea.
Guardian (UK)


The dirtiest, most bizarre, most original works of fiction I’ve read in recent memory.
Vogue.com


Time for the easiest game of "if you loved this movie, read this book" ever: If you loved The Shape of Water,…you should definitely read The Pisces by Melissa Broder, a book about fish sex…[The Pisces offers] an exploration of how deeply impacted we all are in the corrupted world, and how far we’d have to swim to escape it.
Huffington Post


Explosive, erotic, scathingly funny…Its interspecies romantic intrigue buttresses a profound take on connection and longing that digs deep.
Entertainment Weekly


[A]n alternately ribald and poignant fantasy.… Broder evokes the details of bad sex in wincingly naturalistic detail, and even if the good sex is a little more soft-focus, it makes for a satisfying fantasy. [A] consistently funny and enjoyable ride.
Publishers Weekly


This anticipated first novel from poet/essayist Broder is hilariously narrated.… Those who take the plunge will be rewarded with a wild ride from a narrator whose sardonic outlook reveals profound truths about the nature of the self. —Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA
Library Journal


(Starred review) In her first novel, essayist, poet, and Twitter-star Broder (So Sad Today, 2016; Last Sext, 2016) wraps timeless questions of existence—those that gods and stars have beseeched to answer for millennia—in the weirdest, sexiest, and most appealing of modern packaging. Brilliant and delightful.
Booklist


(Starred review) [A]t once intimate and sharp, familiar and ugly. Lucy dares you to recognize your [own] thoughts, fantasies, and obsessions …in life and love.… A fascinating tale of obsession and erotic redemption told with black humor and biting insight.
Kirkus Reviews