The Pisces

December 1, 2017

A Pushcart Prize-winning poet, Elle.com columnist, and author of the celebrated essay collection So Sad Today, Broder now tries out fiction. Lucy, in Venice Beach to recover from a nasty breakup by dog-sitting for her sister, remains glum until she spots a graceful swimmer braving the night waves. But what kind of relationship can you have with a merman?

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 5, 2018
The debut novel by poet and essayist Broder (So Sad Today) is an alternately ribald and poignant fantasy about a relationship between a despondent graduate student and a merman. Lucy, stalled out after years of trying to write a dissertation on Sappho and melting down after her boyfriend breaks up with her, heads out from her desert campus to the beaches of southern California, where she dogsits her sister’s affable hound. Despite joining a sex and love addiction support group, whose members Broder depicts with affectionate sarcasm, Lucy hooks up with one wildly unsuitable man after another. Then, sitting on a rock at the beach and feeling borderline suicidal, she meets a sensitive hunk whose only drawback is that he sports a tail instead of legs. Temporarily, at least, they work out their differences, with Lucy transporting him at night to her beach house in a little red wagon. 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. Broder makes her merman a more complex and believable character than most romantic heroes; her novel is a consistently funny and enjoyable ride.

March 15, 2018
In Broder's debut novel, a disaffected academic struggling with a breakup finds love in the arms of a merman.In the midst of writing a disingenuous dissertation about Sappho, Lucy surprises herself by breaking things off with her longtime boyfriend, Jamie, and spiraling into a depression. Thankfully, Lucy's sister leaves her Venice Beach house, "a contemporary glass fortress," for the summer and invites Lucy to level out, attend therapy, and dogsit. Predictably, Lucy is bad at each of these tasks. In group therapy, Lucy silently judges her fellow codependents, who "all blurred together into a multi-headed hydra of desperation," while plotting how she can get over Jamie by getting under someone else. And while she cares for her sister's dog, she's not responsible enough to handle his strict dietary and medical needs, either. When Lucy meets Theo, a mysterious swimmer who haunts Venice Beach by night, she thinks her luck in love might have finally turned around. But what--other than a tail--might Theo be hiding? And who is Lucy willing to neglect in order to find out? On the surface, this audacious novel from Broder (So Sad Today, 2016, etc.) is a frank exploration of desire, fantasy, and sex. But it dives deeper, too, seeking out uncomfortable topics and bringing them into the light: codependency, depression, suicidal ideation, and an existential fascination with the void each get their days in the sun. When we obsess about a breakup, or about all the sex that comes before a breakup, what are we actually obsessing over? "I didn't know if the universe actively taught lessons," Lucy thinks during her affair with Theo. "But if it did, the lesson was that I could not handle what I thought I could handle." Broder has created a voice at once intimate and sharp, familiar and ugly. Lucy dares you to recognize your thoughts, fantasies, and obsessions in her own even as she makes questionable choices in life and love. This isn't just a novel about navigating the dangers of codependency, but an attempt to learn how we all might love better in a culture that pushes even its strongest women to the brink of self-destruction.A fascinating tale of obsession and erotic redemption told with black humor and biting insight.

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March 15, 2018

This anticipated first novel from poet/essayist Broder is hilariously narrated by late-30s Lucy, whose love life takes a turn for the strange. For years, Lucy has been treading water, working on a dissertation about Sappho and dating an emotionally unavailable geologist. After their breakup and a bit of a nervous breakdown, she goes to dog-sit for her sister in a beautiful Los Angeles house and attends group therapy for women who are "love addicts." The women she meets are both funny and heartbreaking; one of them guides Lucy in the online dating world, and she has many adventures with new men. Casual sex doesn't seem to help her love "addiction," however, and she is attracted to an unnamed man she meets on the beach who turns out to be a real-life merman. The relationship she enters into with this creature from another world leads to more self-destructive behavior but also to self-discovery. VERDICT While this novel has a bizarre premise and may be dismissed as light reading, 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. [See Prepub Alert, 11/8/17.]--Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.