The Fish That Climbed a Tree by Kevin Ansbro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Magical, romantic funny and sad, with a Paradise I wish existed.

This is different to any book I’ve read which is always a good sign. I loved the combination of reality and the interesting characters, even the villains Yuri and Pascal are not simple, undoubtably bad, but not cartoonish (even Pascal, and NOT to make him cartoonish must have been difficult). Their fate is fascinating, but I don’t want to put in spoilers.¬ This will also stop me talking too much about the plot, the twists, the combination of scenes from contemporary England and Paradise, occasionally jumping to Ukraine or Africa. People who are alive and who are dead. Fascinating characters, those wonderful old men, one a literary agent- lucky for young Henry, an aspiring author, another a writer, in the chapter called “An Englishman ,an Irishman, an Indian and a Jew Go into a bar”, and no, t is not a racist joke.
I don’t believe in anything, a complete agnostic, but I would love to be proven wrong and wake up after death in this novel’s Paradise, with the inhabitants teleporting, and conversing in all languages. I loved the details. They hear their own language, but it looks a bit like films which are dubbed because the mouth movements are different. I loved the idea that people can pick up their age, so the daughter who chose to stay her real age of forty meets her father who decided to be twenty. Most of them make themselves younger, but not everybody. The original interview with an archangel determines everything. The absence of God in this Paradise, and of course choice of the archangels like Voltaire or Darwin made me smile .. Wouldn’t it be amazing to meet your hero as your archangel? I imagined being interviewed by Oscar Wilde, Josephus Flavius, or John Steinbeck…
This is definitely magic realism, but different to Saalman Rushdie, Gabriel Marquez or the others. I googled archangels, and I realised they are a rather low order in the angelic hierarchy. The top position of archangels in Milton’s Paradise is apparently wrong.

I liked the humour in the book where the author is playfully making fun of himself One of the old men in the pub, a writer, Mr O’Connor was criticised for use of unnecessarily flowery words when he first started writing.
This is the line from the book:
“Ha! Everyone’s a critic. She’s right, of course. Hey, show me a writer who isn’t sometimes guilty of literary overkill. This is where a good copy editor is worth their weight in gold. In my first novel, when I didn’t yet know my arse from my elbow, I used the word ‘pulchritudinous’ to describe a beautiful woman. Sweet Jesus, how pretentious!”
I think Kevin Ansbro sometimes writes in a style only an intellectual can understand.
But then, maybe not. I understand those words, and I am a foreigner, English being my 5th language in a historical sense.
His language is rich, poetic, and yet there is a fast pace to the story. And of course, the wonderfully ridiculous, albeit immoral and appalling character Sebastian, using pretentious expressions which would be enough if he didn’t use the wrong words – the choice of his alternative words is brilliant. I only remembered insoluble, (he meant he was broke- always) no money- insolvent or mentioning “George du Maurier’s Bengali rather than Svengali. Kevin Ansbro’s language is complicated and very intellectual, but never pretentious.
The book is sometimes surprisingly romantic but not too sweet. The sex scenes are not explicit, but they contain humorous elements and clearly convey intense passion.
When something wonderful ends, we always feel disappointed. Reading this book left me wanting for more. There are so many possibilities in this book, and so many branches one could follow. I am a terrible digresser. And greedily I want more. But that is probably the best recommendation for this book. The readers will want to come for more.



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