LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019. Profoundly modern and darkly comic, The Pisces is about a heartbroken PhD student who over one summer falls in dangerous, ecstatic love with a merman
Melissa Broder is the author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections, including Last Sext. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize for poetry, she also 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
Of all the books that I read this summer I think this was my
absolute favourite. It really blew me away. Phenomenally written.
[Broder's] writing is so creative and can be so abstract and so
unexpected while also being so universal and earthy and funny. It
was raw and powerful and it made me cry
*Dolly Alderton, The High Low*
Bizarrely brilliant. What should you be reading this summer? A
tragi-comic interspecies love story with undertones of ancient
Greek philosophy and sex-positive feminism. Obviously
*The Times*
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*
One of the must-reads of the season
*Elle, Ultimate Summer Books Round-Up*
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
*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*
Literary erotica merges with magical realism and black humour in
this extraordinary debut novel about a dejected young woman’s
night-time liaisons with a merman. Strong stuff, but it’s spreading
quickly through word of mouth, making it summer’s cool read to be
spotted with
*You Magazine*
In Broder’s charmingly kooky debut novel, a depressed Ph.D. student
chances upon her dream date – and he’s half fish. Broder approaches
the great existential subjects as if they were a collection of bad
habits. That’s what makes her writing so funny, and so sad
*Editors' Choice Picks, New York Times Book Review*
In this dark, physical tale, an academic writing her dissertation
on Sappho moves to Venice Beach, where, on the verge of a nervous
breakdown, she falls in love with a merman. Broder's novel is a
feverish - and often quite graphic - exploration of fantasy and
desire, and the extremes to which they can take us. (And how,
ultimately, nothing can match a dog's love.) It's simultaneously
hilarious, sinister and utterly mesmerising
*Tatler*
Blazes with vibrancy … The book’s power lies in its ability to be
many things at once: a howl of anguish and existential despair, a
psychological drama, a fairytale, fish porn … Resembles the new
wave of female authors taking a much needed swing at the societal
myths surrounding conformity and normativity, from Chris Kraus to
Leila Slimani
*Financial Times*
An incisive look at modern love. Just brilliant. We absolutely
loved it!
*Pandora Sykes, The High Low*
This is love in the age of consumer capitalism, and Broder is
pin-sharp on its disillusionments … In a culture like this, who
could resist the siren call of a non-human creature who is
fulfilled and complete in himself? ... 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*
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*
The Pisces convincingly romances the void
*NewYorker.com*
Broder deftly catches the victims of victimhood in her satirical
glance, but she also recognises frailty when she sees it … The book
has great momentum, like waves hitting the rocks … Part satire,
part fairy tale and, sometimes jarringly, part meditation on
addiction
*New York Times Book Review*
Bizarre, erotic and mordantly funny, this is the story of a
heartbroken student’s romantic obsession with a merman. This
explosive fantasy is one of the most original debuts to come out
this year
*Book Riot*
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*
Broder is just as hilarious as she is wrenchingly honest
*Elle Book Club*
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
*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
*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'*
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*
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*
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
*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
*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
*Elle*
Witty and observant ... [Broder] is unflinchingly honest about the
privileges and problems facing adults today
*Jewish Chronicle*
If you haven’t yet read something by Melissa Broder, you are truly
missing out
*Shondaland*
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