Voice of the Fish: A Lyric Essay

by Lars Horn

Lars Horn’s Voice of the Fish, the latest Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize winner, is an interwoven essay collection that explores the trans experience through themes of water, fish, and mythology, set against the backdrop of travels in Russia and a debilitating back injury that left Horn temporarily unable to speak. In Horn’s adept hands, the collection takes shape as a unified book: short vignettes about fish, reliquaries, and antiquities serve as interludes between longer essays, knitting together a sinuous, wave-like form that flows across the book.

Horn swims through a range of subjects, roving across marine history, theology, questions of the body and gender, sexuality, transmasculinity, and illness. From Horn’s upbringing with a mother who used them as a model in photos and art installations—memorably in a photography session in an ice bath with dead squid—to Horn’s travels before they were out as trans, these essays are linked by a desire to interrogate liminal physicalities. Horn reexamines the oft-presumed uniformity of bodily experience, breaking down the implied singularity of “the body” as cultural and scientific object. The essays instead privilege ways of seeing and being that resist binaries, ways that falter, fracture, mutate. A sui generis work of nonfiction, Voice of the Fish blends the aquatic, mystical, and physical to reach a place beyond them all.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Queer, Memoir, LGBT, Poetry, Transgender

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 2022

About the author

Lars Horn is a writer and translator working in literary and experimental non-fiction. Their first book, VOICE OF THE FISH, won the 2020 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. The recipient of a Sewanee Writers’ Conference scholarship, Horn’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Kenyon Review, Write Across Canada: An Anthology of Emerging Writers, New Writing Scotland, Gutter Magazine, and elsewhere. They live in Miami with their wife, the writer Jaquira Díaz.

Reviews

[archive ☄ · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's not enough to read this book you literally have to walk into its waters and dissolve into sea foam. sorry i don't make the rules

[Christopher Alonso · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had the brain to write a book like this. Voice of the Fish is a linked essay collection about the body and the relation of oneself to it as a thing that acts and is acted upon. Using myth, history, science, criticism, and personal anecdotes, Horn delivers one of my favorite reads of the year. I found it such a rewarding experience.

[Shani Laskin · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don’t even know how to describe this book except to say that it’s delicious

[Ivanna Berrios · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes u can just so tell someone went to the ecole normale :// the book is not as intelligent as it thinks it is but very beautiful at times

[andrea ˁ῁̥ˀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

really good and also not so good. do what you will with that.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very much a lyric work. Very, very lyrical at times. Some really insightful moments and true beauty.

I think changing up language would've broken up monotony. I read this over the course of 4 days, ~50 pages each. The book felt incredibly dense due to the writing style. I think it's a matter of knowing when it's appropriate to use and when it's not. Change of pace would've really benefitted this work.

I think what bothered me most was dialogue. Oftentimes a character would have distinct dialogue. Then suddenly the character would say something and you'd feel like Horn was the one speaking—because it was indistinguishable from the narrative...

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up

a tapestry of classics, performance art, theology, travel, medicine, academia, folklore, martyrs, language - and fish, of course - the list goes on. woven beautifully. but my favourite parts were simply those of Horn’s own experiences. Images of the bejewelled eels will never leave my mind.

edit 08/11 I think about this book daily forget 4.5 stars

[Intelligent Meat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mm feeling like a fish in the most un-gendered way. Absolutely excellent read. 🐟

[Kris M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed my experience reading this book thoroughly.
In fact it's a very good representation of the way information and thought exists in my brain which made the flow of the book feel very natural to me. I learned a lot, and I am in awe at the beautiful introspective writing.

[Novi · Rating 4 out of 5]

was drawn to this book because its synopsis felt very similar to how far the light reaches: an author who has a deep relationship to the ocean and entangles their life with its creatures. however, these books are vastly different. Lars's writing is incredibly lyrical and beautiful, but at times it was his language that I felt like really masked the true power of what he was saying. The words he used simultaneously at times pushed me so far away from meaning, but also pulled me so close to understanding. Unlike Imbler who focuses mostly only on sea creatures, Lars also has a strong relationship to the element of water itself and writes several stories about his ties to it. He also incorporates so much historical knowledge. I learned so much about different cultures and their tales about fish and the sea, the development of fish tanks/aquariums, and (my favorite story about his tattoos) the origins of tattoo ink and the tradition of tattooing in different cultures. What I didn't expect to be exposed to in this book are these incredible Chinese performance artists. I can't stop thinking about their work specifically Zhang Huan and Song Dong. I loved the diversity of structure in this book. There were sections of the book that were traditional chapters vs. chapters filled with short vignettes vs. just chapters that were poems or a page long.

What I am left mulling on:
- the physicality of language and my body
- "Family Tree" and "To Raise the Water Level in a Fish Pond" by Zhang Huan
- "Stamping the Water" by Song Dong
- i want to be exposed to more art made by Chinese artists
- feeling conflicted about my love for aquariums

[Molly McIntyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I have always felt less alone in water. As if it knows me, somehow."
holy moly this was amazing. i truly felt like it was written for me. 800/10. i want to be in the sea again. dbihdvbr3bihevcivbfdiwbvdvkhcbsaicbfehbvf

[mihu ➿ · Rating 5 out of 5]

the most personal to me, i adore this!

[Emily Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very, very special book. It is completely original and so beautifully written. Even with the fragmentary style and narrative which is interwoven with observations and research, it is so readable and absorbing and has clearly been incredibly well thought out and intelligently done. It was a beautiful experience to read something so unique.

I highly recommend reading this in the bath with the water splashing around you, it feels very fitting.

[Jensvdpp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very beautiful !
A different type of writing that took a moment to get used to but I really enjoyed it. Beautiful passages and overall vibe was cool. Would recommend :)

[Ayicia Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very fishy, very decent read while my coworkers played non stop sports programming
The thought of getting a full body plaster cast made me have to put the book down for a while

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video review https://youtu.be/PXEzqvXfj34

[Viviana Gabriela · Rating 4 out of 5]

pure flabbergasting poetry! highlighted heavily...some scientific inserts about aquatic life were truly intriguing, others were tiring, not filtered enough. nevertheless, i loved how they were paralleled with the experience of being trans, of shapeshifting. i can sense a lot of care at the core of every paragraph, every character. i wish he would have expanded more on his life, it seems incomplete, always circling back to the same events that seemed solved, healed.

[frolick inthe machine · Rating 5 out of 5]

genderqueers, time travelers, (Christian) mystics, will appreciate. if you’ve ever felt more like landscape or like water than human, this is for you…

style: kind of an understated (masculine) affect. Very imagistic fragments. Penchant for detail and remembered speech, quotes. They use a documentary tone of voice for both personal anecdotes that they tell about their life as well as the more historical, academic bits about ancient Greeks, myths, aquariums, reliquaries, eels, fish.

You can tell that Horn is used to research & academic writing by their extended meditation on extremely niche histories. can come off as dry or tedious - especially in sharp contrast to the visceral, lively personal experiences that they narrate. but it also feels like creating an archive, a cultural archive, as evidence that their watery, fishy sensibility actually does have a long and ancient history, even a spiritual one, is part of the point of the book.

there’s a persistent sense they they feel disjointed, out of place and time, and they are trying to use language in unexpected and rigorous ways to make their experience more legible, a soft place for their body to “slip through.” You may not come away with a clear argument or “point” to the book but immersing yourself in its language and pov does feel like slipping into water and feeling yourself shift and open up, even if momentarily.

The language is really what will make you stop and wonder. make you recalibrate your experiences bc what if you could write abt them the way they do? then almost anything could be spiritual.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I liked the idea of this book more than I enjoyed actually reading it. As a trans person who often feels like I don’t fit into the traditional gender binary, I was excited to read this book. I’m always curious to hear about other people’s experiences of gender. The parts where Horn directly talks about gender were the parts I found most interesting and relatable, but a large part of the book was made up of tales of ancient myths, marine history, folk medicine, and stories about their childhood/relationship with their mother. Some of these I found interesting and some felt kind of long and unrelated to the rest of the book. For me I don’t have a particular interest in a lot of these topics and since they were just short introductions/overviews of it was hard to feel invested in any of them.

The actual writing was beautiful and lyrical, and it was an interesting concept for a book. I appreciate that for the right reader it is a great book.

What stuck with me:

- Horn's descriptions of aquariums and of marine animals forced to live in confined spaces under bright lights. How unnatural it is. It makes me think about how it feels to live in a world that’s not made for you.

- Feelings of alienation

- I understand now what a lyric essay is, I think this is the first one I’ve read.

[Quoth the Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Blue to swallow a body. Blue to dissolve the weight, the heaviness of blood and days."

Voice of the Fish explores how a body and trauma can coexist within a singular entity. As Horn dives further into this simultaneous reality, they transform their own body, juxtaposed with fish. The fish and the body become symbols of witness; what does it mean to watch oneself move through the world? How do others view the body that I am placed in? Through anecdotes and imagistic language, Horn does coalesces every part of themself to become a creature worth watching, a creature meant to slip away.

However, I felt the language of the book became overly cliche, disrupting the work's power at times. Horn demonstrates academic prowess, but their execution of displaying this trait through flowery language made feel a disconnect with the crux of what they were saying. Additionally, the relationship they write about with their mother seems to drop off after the beginning portion and the remainders of the book felt less structurally sound as the incredibly strong beginning.

[Corinne S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4 stars
The writing in this book is immaculate, endearing, and tender. I found it interesting and captivating at times, usually when Lars Horn was recounting moments in their life and journey or articulating the relation between humanity’s struggles and the existence of fish and water and being. However, it took a lot of effort to press through some parts that droned on and on about the history of aquariums or just history in general that I felt were a bit unrelated, rather lengthy, and somewhat monotonous. I enjoyed some of the shorter excerpts and facts as they helped guide the journey and give more perspective and insight. Overall, the prose and paradigms in this book are wholeheartedly captivating and enjoyable, but since the book did have its rough spots I can only really give it three stars.

[quasialidia · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the end, this book is very though provoking, and in form, moves/lives like the eel. However,
the book does not live up the the promise it begins with: to offer a new form of writing… or even autobiography/memoir. The book is  still interesting and thought provoking, gentle and flowing at times, with some rapids and some fish swimming in it, but at heart, the subject is centered, concrete, easily placed. One thing, on (162) where Horn describes their word art, this is a part i wanted to see: these concrete word poems; adding some glossy image plates here, or put haphazardly throughout the memoir, would have made this pastiche better and more provoking.

[Säm · Rating 4 out of 5]

many things have been put into words which I also went through
so many themes hit me like a truck

my first non-fiction book and I'm glad that it was this one
interesting way to learn new facts (not just about fish) while reading about L. Horns personal stories and their very interesting view of the world in connection to water
sometimes I was a little lost in the amount of "deep dives" into topics of historical information but always got back on track

[CJ]

Another book I’ve been gently dipping myself into over several months. This lyrical creative non fiction series of vignettes feels so targeted toward me and the affects and ideas that I’ve come to obsess and fixate on, and it is often beautifully written. Broadly, across a kind of blinking stream of free association, Lars Horn pieces together a history of the(ir) body as an aqueous, wild thing, pressed up against an equally fluid and strange world. In doing so, they wind their way toward a relationship to body and embodiment that speaks to language, gender, and the violence of its sharp edges, the entangling of its nuance. again, all things i deeply relate to. Still, some part of me wished for a bit more concision: maybe because of how I read the book, it felt a little too long and wandering. This is not a book that aims for coherence, nor should it, but nonetheless I wished for more points where things could coalesce a bit more clearly rather than the kind of iterative repetition of images and moments that ends up playing out. The book is meant to be a feely-vibey kind of impressionistic tide, but it also is punctured by an acute sense of research and precision in its referentiality that made me wish for a bit more of a historically tight argument (god, can’t believe i’m saying this). In its broad imagistic montage, I almost felt like it lost some of its acuity to a generic universalisation of civilisational encounters with water and aquatic being. Like when Horn’s analysis of Chinese contemporary art is suddenly punctuated by their critique of its unintended invocation of blackface—a comment that feels like a sudden, out of nowhere quip that is out of step with the poetic shapeless wiggling of the writing, that then calls into orbit Horn’s own position and sense of movement through the global scenes that they enumerate. Nonetheless, I got a lot out of their really powerful descriptions of the kind of ineffable beyond-words sense of how a body and mind comes to be. Definitely something I would revisit with greater attention and thoughtfulness

[Alex Róbertsdóttir · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was like reading a more eloquent diary of my alter ego. It was beautiful and heart wrenching. I love the fish and water imagery, and the feeling of Eels in my guts is something I never knew how to put into words. Using poetry and essays to reflect on what it feels like to have a body that feels off, but using that body to become art and to experience the world. In order to fully realize yourself you have to kill yourself so many times over and try to stretch (and ink) your skin to match. Maybe we are the ones in the aquariums, but we don’t know where our natural habitats are.

“The body was movement, volume, was rhythm through space. The body was not to be looked at. Except when that looking made it strange. When the stilling of a body undid it.”
“Become a thing of changing dimensions.”
“The body— a slippery vessel”
“Writing as relic, rite, as ritual. A thing not to be read, but touched, sworn upon, housed in a body.”

[Eli Eli · Rating 3 out of 5]

as a transmasculine person, i enjoyed the descriptions of body / identity and the writing about what it means to inhabit a body. as a reader, i found some of the non-fiction explanations way too long or too frequent. its a good book and the writing is really interesting, but more than once i had to stop myself to ask if i would hate the author if i met them in a bar, because the writing was a touch pretentious and the discussion of lit crit, obscure history, quotes, etc. got tiring... it felt like the author was telling a story about 3 events but never mentioned the events more than once or twice across, like, so many paragraphs, and chose to write around them via trivia instead. anyway, helpful progress on writings about transness, less helpful history about the tattoo, aquariums, and animals

[Apollo Y · Rating 5 out of 5]

“but i have never felt comfortable with an ‘i’, or bringing any concept of ‘me’ as a self to language. i find silence and physicality come more naturally. and distance. to feel oneself as ‘over there’, as nebulous. within and without.”

so so so glad that i picked this up on a whim. i loved this, feeling simultaneously very unsettled and comforted by how so many of my own thoughts were mirrored by the author’s. this memoir definitely has some intense moments, but the introspection they follow with felt so valuable that i am grateful that they were willing to share bits of their life through this book. i loved the narrative grounding of water throughout all of this, ferrying me from one end of the book to the other, beautiful and variable in what horn was able to pull from it.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever been cast in plaster? Would you prefer to assume a physical form that is other than human? How many times will you die in this life, and how do you prepare? If you’ve ever felt like a foreign visitor, another species or the mere prop of an indifferent play, check out the lyric essay Voice of the Fish by Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize winner Lars Horn. Let Horn’s mother pose you as her artist’s model, hitch a postlingual ride with them across former Soviet Georgia, seek the healing counsel of a Piscean soothsayer, and step outside the cramped boxes of the binary in favor of more commodious quarters.

[Elliot Papp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend to anyone interested in poetic prose, artistically delivered historical and scientific research, aquatic creatures, etc - the connections made between various historical events and lines of thinking, scientific research and fact, and the author's own life and physical/emotional experiences were really well done and I was excited to follow each section and find out where the author was taking me. The writing itself was beautiful and I appreciated the flow of it. Definitely worth a read!

[The Atlantic]

"In the new essay collection 'Voice of the Fish,' Lars Horn wonders 'how common [it is] to feel completely at odds with being human,' and uses a long-standing fascination with marine life to reimagine the body’s potential." — Alana Mohamed

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...