Melissa Broder is the author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections, including Last Sext. Her poetry has appeared in POETRY, The Iowa Review, Tin House, Guernica, and she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She writes the “So Sad Today” column at Vice, the astrology column for Lenny Letter, and the “Beauty and Death” column on Elle’s website. She lives in Los Angeles.
"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.”—The New York
Times
“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.”—The Washington Post
" 'The Pisces' convincingly romances the void."—Jia
Tolentino, The New Yorker
“The dirtiest, most bizarre, most original works of fiction I’ve
read in recent memory."—Vogue.com
“Explosive, erotic, scathingly funny…Its interspecies romantic
intrigue buttresses a profound take on connection and longing that
digs deep.”—Entertainment Weekly
“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 Sweetbitter
"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 is an intellectual, enthralling voyage into one woman’s
swirling mind as she brushes with the
extraordinary.”—Refinery29
“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
“Melissa Broder joins the mermaid craze, but she does so with a
focus on how our fantasies can help us move past romantic
codependency.”—Bitch
“The debut novel by poet and essayist Broder (So Sad Today) is an
alternately ribald and poignant fantasy…Broder makes her merman a
more complex and believable character than most romantic heroes;
her novel is a consistently funny and enjoyable read.”—Publisher's
Weekly
"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."—The Guardian
“The Pisces is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, with a keenly
satirical eye towards our culture of therapy and recovery. It
also features a bunch of lady-and-fish sex, which is apparently
having a moment.”—Vulture.com, "10 Books We Can't Wait to Read This
Spring"
“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
“Broder delivers her signature hilarity, intelligence, and spot-on
examination of the human (et al.) condition.”—Marie Claire
"No one writes about love like Melissa Broder, who captures the
feverish obsession with both the lover and the self in hilarious,
mesmerizing detail. I scarfed The Pisces in handfuls,
surprised and delighted by every inventive detail and compelled by
the lucid insights and chillingly familiar compulsions of the
narrator. This is a book for every smart person who has made very
bad decisions, who thought love might save them from themselves,
who has been hypnotized by pleasure and become willing to give up
everything for just one more taste."—Melissa Febos, author of Whip
Smart and Abandon Me
"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. Broder's wit, vulnerability, and
brilliance make me delirious with gratitude. What manic pleasures,
perfectly rendered in a naked confessional voice, await you. It's
impossible not to read (and revere) this book obsessively."—Alissa
Nutting, author of Made for Love
"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
“The Venice Beach of The Pisces is familiar at first, but it
quickly transforms into a new place in which fantasy can become
reality overnight. I love how Melissa Broder navigates the
anticipation of lust, the consequences of love, the lure of
self-destruction, and the indecision between what seems right and
what seems crazy. This book is for anyone that’s wondered where
their longing will take them next.”—Chelsea Hodson, author of
Tonight I’m Someone Else
“This anticipated first novel from poet/essayist Broder is
hilariously narrated…Those wo 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.”—Library Journal
“The sex scenes are often funny (“his balls were delicious, like
raw oysters”), but Broder balances the weirdness of merman erotica
with a realistic look at depression and recovery. The Pisces
is perfect for anyone who wishes The Shape of Water as more
explicit, but is also great for those looking for a novel that gets
real about mental health, with a little fantasy thrown in.”—Bust
Magazine
"I've long been a Melissa Broder fan but I had no idea a fabulist
novelist lived in her too. I've never quite read anything like the
surreal merman romantic comedy that is The Pisces! Broder has
always been a simultaneously out-of-this-world &
very-much-in-this-world poet/comic, so it's a wild delight to watch
her transition to modern-day mythologist. 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 and the
novels The Last Illusion and Sons & Other Flammable Objects
“Starting with Sappho and ripping through the Los Angeles lovelorn,
this exquisite story of romantic obsession deftly blends
existential terror with sexy surrealism for a one-sitting absolute
thrall. This book has my number so hard, I’m waiting for its
midnight texts."—Amelia Gray, author of Isadora
"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, TV Writer
and author of Science...For Her!
“Melissa Broder has officially written the modern myth: a
hilarious, surreal tale of addiction and academia, depression and
desire, mania and melancholy. Through the eyes of our
merman-obsessed anti-heroine, we become attuned to both the
poignancy and pointlessness of the human experience—from illusory
ambition to unruly erotic fantasy. (Broder writes sex like no one
else I’ve read.) The Pisces will have you LOL-ing while you’re
longing while you’re cringing while you’re philosophizing—this is
what it feels like to exist, and to attempt love, in the deluded
torpor that is our time.”—Molly Prentiss, author of Tuesday
Nights in 1980
"Dazzling, bold, unforgettable—Melissa Broder has written a seismic
love story for the incurably curious. —Kristen Iskandrian, author
of Motherest
"By turns 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
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