The Fish

by Lloyd Jones

When his troubled sister’s baby is born, in a shabby caravan at a remote beach park, he is not like other babies. Not the kind of baby anyone expected: startling in his otherness. But one the family will try to protect and love and accept.
The Fish is central in the life of the young narrator as he tries to make sense of his family and its confusing secrets and shame, and to find his own way in the world.

Lloyd Jones brings his unique lyrical style to this mesmerising and tender story of family bonds, both strained and strengthened by tragedy.

Genres: Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2022

About the author

Lloyd Jones was born in 1955 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, a place which has become a frequent setting and subject for his subsequent works of fiction. He studied at Victoria University, and has worked as a journalist and consultant as well as a writer. His recent novels are: Biografi (1993); Choo Woo (1998); Here At The End of the World We Learn to Dance (2002); Paint Your Wife (2004);and Mister Pip (2007). He is also the author of a collection of short stories, Swimming to Australia (1991).

In 2003, he published a children's picture book, Napoleon and the Chicken Farmer, and this was followed by Everything You Need to Know About the World by Simon Eliot (2004), a book for 9-14 year olds. He compiled Into the Field of Play: New Zealand Writers on the Theme of Sport (1992), and also wrote Last Saturday (1994), the book of an exhibition about New Zealand Saturdays, with photographs by Bruce Foster. The Book of Fame (2000), is his semi-fictional account of the 1905 All-Black tour, and was adapted for the stage by Carol Nixon in 2003.

Lloyd Jones won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) and the Kiriyama Prize for his novel, Mister Pip (2007), set in Bougainville in the South Pacific, during the 1990s. He was also shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. In the same year he undertook a Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers' Residency.

Reviews

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review is published in the April edition of goodREADING magazine.

[Jan Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was hard to get my head around the fish character. The book reads a bit like a fable but there are clear NZ places and timeframes, enough to confuse that line between fable and reality. The last third was very gripping (no spoiler alert) but didn’t really bring the story to a conclusion for me. However, the prose is so worth the read. Lloyd Jones creates beautiful descriptive and crafted sentences.

[Helen Cummings · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a rather sad and depressing read. Set in 1960’s New Zealand the family Fish is born into is beset with problems, illnesses and deaths and then the story ends with the Wahine disaster. It seemed rather contrived somehow.

[Tab · Rating 4 out of 5]

initially when i picked this up i didn’t really know what to make of it - the storyline in itself sounds rather odd when bluntly described. a human fish? ‘reverse mermaid’ as i put it? reading it, however, was an entirely different experience and though the text in my copy of the book was abnormally large i found myself immersed in the world of the Fish and the complexity of his dysfunctional family rather quickly. the familiarity of the setting made it feel all nice and warm - there were certain descriptions that absolutely radiated the feeling of classic new zealand culture which i always love to read. the language was perfectly emotional with tinges of humour in all the right places; the writing style hit every spot in a sense of deep simplicity. not once did it feel wordy and complicated, yet it was ambiguously striking all the same. so much food for my hungry hungry brain. i found the transitions between the uses of ‘our’ and ‘the’ as well as ‘he’ and ‘it’ in regards to the Fish particularly interesting, and interpreted the way the narrator refers to his nephew differently as a matter dependant on the level of closeness he felt to him. overall such an unique exploration of relationships, grief, absence and belonging. as the novel drew to a close and the writing turned to prose i was eeeeeeeeee ee eeeee eeeeeeee i wanted to drink ALL of it up SLURRRRRRP (big slurp) (water) oh my mama FIIIIIIISH it was so eeeeee AND I WANT TO CRY SO MUCH i want to CRY i’m EEEEEEEEE the it was the beautiful and sobbingly beautiful

[Text Publishing]

The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of The Fish:

'A story of family, its tragedies and triumphs.’
Age

'Lloyd Jones's dreamlike and lyrical novel tells a tender story of family bonds, both strained and strengthened by tragedy, and re-states the redemptive power of writing and storytelling.’
The Paperback Bookshop

'The Fish is sheer pleasure, with its absurdist premise, sentimental narrative and picaresque structure...This is not, however, only a funny book. It is wry and wistful and contains a romantic episode tinged with tragedy that is as moving as it is surprising. The Fish is a novel with a lot of notes in its repertoire, and unexpected swerves between poignancy and hilarity.’
Age/SMH

‘A strange but ultimately beautiful story, marked by tragedy and human warmth.’
Canberra Times

‘Beautiful, lyrical and poetical.’
Good Reading

‘One expects beautiful prose from Jones, and he does not disappoint.’
Saturday Paper

‘[Shows] the tender determination of [a] family to love and care for a creature they do not recognise.’
Advertiser

[Bathsheba Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The timeline was a little messed up or it was purposefully meant to jump around. Set in the late 60s ... mostly anyway.
So many questions though.
Was it drugs or mental illness or both?
Was it FAS or some other disability, or maybe it was incest?
And what was with the weird pedo sex scene with the couple in the car?
Why did one daughter get an abortion and the other didn't?
Why did some characters have no names? I don't understand the link between them that made them nameless?
And the deaths ....
Ours is not to reason why I suppose....

For all the questions raised, I liked the journey back in time but still a place I was familiar with.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know whether to class this as fantasy or general fiction - a bit of both, maybe? Magical realism, perhaps. There's only one fantastical element and it's accepted by everyone as the norm, so maybe. The narrator's teenage sister gives birth to the Fish. He's a sort of half-boy, half-piscine hybrid, all gills and bulging eyes and the ability to play chess and work in the scrap yard, and life with the Fish is constant negotiation. How do we make him seem more human? Where did he come from? Does it matter, really, or is his presence enough? It's bleakly funny in places, the sort of funny that you get from a young narrator who is very honest and doesn't realise that his honesty is amusing. I do think that it runs out of steam a little towards the end, where the disappearance of the Fish in the wake of what must be the Wahine disaster sort of overbalances the ambiguity of the whole, but it was still deeply entertaining. I really enjoyed it.

[Zoe Brittain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why does all Australian and NZ lit seemingly have to include a very viscerally gross sex scene? Other than that, this book made me feel a lot of feelings that I couldn't quite place and I enjoyed the writing style

[kit :0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not expecting this to be such a delicate and painful painting of grief and guilt but it managed to somehow be this while also being un-put-down-able.
loved; the character voice, the simple poetry, the fish.
I have imagined a vast library and now this book is within it.

[Frankie Pullar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing story. at times I struggled to decipher between the literal and figurative. Thought provoking personal voice.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lloyd Jones is a favourite New Zealand author of mine, but The Fish is a very bleak book indeed.

You know sometimes when you're watching the news, you think, how can one family cope with so much tragedy? The Fish shows with terrible clarity, that sometimes it doesn't.

Longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2023, the novel begins in 1960s New Zealand with the birth of  the titular 'fish' in a caravan to the unmarried and nameless teenage sister of the narrator. Despite the description of difference in his appearance, the newborn is of course not a fish.  He is a male child, and the reader knows that from his pronouns on the very first page. He has legs, he wears nappies, he is breastfed, and he learns to say 'Mummy' — though by the time that happens, his mother has lost interest in him altogether and doesn't think he's cute anymore.

'Mum', it says.  'Mummy.'  Its beady eyes grow.  Its fish lips shape a smile.  It doesn't look or sound like a Colin.  It sounds like a fish trained to say 'Mummy'.

The Fish's mother sits chewing her nails.  Her Fish doesn't delight her anymore. She doesn't want to be a mother.  She doesn't say so.  She doesn't need to.  The glumness of the Fish's mother forces a fake cheeriness from everyone. (p.55)

There's quite a bit of fake cheeriness masking what is never said in this narrative.  The narrator, looking back on these events and also unnamed, is chided by his mother when once he blurts out his nickname for the new member of the family. She is determined that her grandchild be treated like any other, and he never uses the cruel name aloud again.  She loses her temper, just once, in frustration, when he turns out not to be a 'good speller' like the rest of the family' and this shocks the narrator who is used to his mother as a role model guiding them all to treat the child well.  But like all role models she is human, and imperfect, and she feels disappointment and frustration like anyone else.)

The narrator, for all his cleverness with vocabulary — quoting the Latin origins of new words for the fun of it — is a kid bewildered by the appearance of this new child.  Like his father and mother, he appears to come to terms with it, but he is embarrassed and ashamed at school.

In his class photo the Fish has been placed at the end of the row.  There is a gap between him and the girl in the white school blouse standing next to him.  There are no other gaps in any of the other rows.  We know because we have looked, in that way of the aggrieved out to prove a point.  The rest of the class is shoulder to shoulder.  Three rows of pegs.  Except for the girl next to our Fish.  We find a place to hide the class photo.  We worry that the Fish will see in the photo what has not been apparent to him in his short life so far.  He is different.  My sister has given birth to difference.  Worse, she has placed difference in our ranks. (p.3)

The narrator knows he shouldn't feel like this, but he does.  And yet, he feels aggrieved, and he wants to protect this child from the realisation not just that he is different, but that other people reject him for it. And yet when Carla, the beautiful sister who took off for Sydney when she was unmarried and pregnant, comes home to meet the child she didn't know existed, she soon learns to be fond of him too.  Clearly, he is lovable.

To read the rest of my review, please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/02/08/t...

[Averil · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's difficult to know what to make of this book. Lloyd Jones' writing is always beautiful, no matter the topic, but there are elements of this book that just didn't feel for me. 

The titular Fish is born, and is physically 'other', hence his nickname of the Fish. Jones never really specifies what is 'wrong' with the Fish. The child is largely non-verbal, has bulging swivelling eyes, can breathe (or can he?) underwater, has a strong odour. Not being particularly into fantasy set-ups, I struggled with the lack of definition of this character - is he actually physically a fish, somehow literally fishlike, or is it an unkind reference to unusual physical features. It threw me off for the whole book. 

However, the fish part aside, the plot elements of the book are interesting, if depressing. Fish or not, Jones tackles head-on how people cope when confronted with otherness, and I guess in that way my reaction says it all. 

The book is also strongly family focused, examining sibling relationships and the unspoken understandings that families have, even during trauma. 

Lloyd Jones hit his peak on Mister Pip, and I was disappointed by this book, mainly for its depressing subject matter and insistence on the fantasy of the fish to prove a point. It's nominated for the Ockham Fiction Award this year, and I find myself hoping it isn't the winner, even though the writing was beautiful in places.


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[starryboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Oh I know it's not your fault, sweet boy"
She throws her arms around the Fish. She squeezes so tight the Fish's head pops up from her embrace, and it's fish eyes swivel back to the cartoons.
"Do you forgive me, sweet boy?"

I'm gonna be honest, I have no clue what to make of this book! The writing is beautiful, the family themes deeply explored, and possible meanings spread everywhere. I was on my toes the entire time.

The Fish is a depressing book with a bittersweet ending but it was certainly worth reading, it's lyrical textual style is something your eyes can't get away from. It's tender, and mysterious. Even after finishing, I don't understand what was wrong with the Fish nor who he was, where the Fish's mother or father went, what the random sex scene meant, what happened to the fish, and the narrator himself

At first I thought it was a simple metaphor about a fish out of water, for a special needs kid, after all he is non-verbal... But In the end I don't know if I even agree with that meaning at all. The Fish.. is a fish. The uncles slow yet growing love for him, that caught me. That's family, I thought.

I recommend this book if you want to bend your mind and absorb something without making a lot of sense out of it. It's a book that when you finish you go "wtf" and life goes on. Its one of those books where you make your theories, I suppose. My little theory, is that the narrator and the Fish may be the same person.. to some extent. Who knows?

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would have to be one of the strangest books I have ever read. And yet there was something in the lyrical writing and something in the sustained efforts of the characters to cope with their loss and confusion as tragedy ensued that made me want to keep on reading. Despite the fact that I think a thorough edit and chronological rearrangement would have made the whole thing more understandable. But I don’t think reader understanding was very high on the author’s agenda.

I was also confused about where the book was set. The only hint in the whole first section was that the sister flew to Sydney and said she would be back in a wee while. I kept thinking that an incident or attitude didn’t fit with Australia and then was jolted to the realisation that it wasn’t set in Australia. A simple data point of time and place would have given some useful reference.

There were small sections of prose that were just so lovely and some insights that were touchingly elicited. But the whole concept of describing the life of a family member with an unmentioned disability, loved as he was, with such prejudice, pitying and disparagement was just unnecessary and unlovely. And overall, too much was left unsaid for the book be easily absorbed or read.

I remember now that I tried an earlier book from this author and could not finish it.

[Don Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, as one who grew up in NZ in the 1950s and ‘60s. This is set around Wellington and involves an unusual boy (the Fish of the title) born to an unmarried mother, usually a scandal at the time. Really, the novel is about a NZ family at the time, with all the secrets and denials they harbour. The Fish does not make as large a presence in the book as the reviews I read beforehand. Today, we would probably say he has autism, or similar. The last quarter of the novel was something of a surprise - I didn’t see it coming anyway - with another slice of Kiwiana in the late ‘60s added. A quick and easy read, by an author who grew up around the time and place in which it was set.

[Martin Braunton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Fish is an allegorical tale of absence and return. Set in 1966 Wellington, The Fish is the story of a dysfunctional family and narrated by the uncle of the mysterious "fish."
What the fish is, I am not quite sure. He is given a name (Colin Montgomery - is this a reference to the golfer as the story is set near a links golf course?) and is the nephew of the narrator.
I am not sure what the fish represents as "he" or even "it" is often described in unflattering terms throughout the novel.
I was lucky enough to meet Lloyd Jones at the recent Auckland Writers Festival. The Fish is not as good as Mister Pip - not as satisfying anyway.

[Rebecca here I am · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audio version of this book and found it both entertaining and provoking. Living abroad, it’s kiwi references - to places, objects and phrases - were nostalgic and somehow comforting for me. I loved the mystery of the fish, how the character was constantly evolving in my minds eye. Lloyd Jones quite skilfully achieved this by slowly adding more description throughout the book. Dealing with topics like acceptance and inclusivity, grief, mental health and family dynamics, all with a bit of dark humour. I think this was a powerful read, revealing side of our lives we don’t want others to know about.

[Alison · Rating 2 out of 5]

An endurance to finish this. Once you get over the conceit of a baby being a fish then this is a pretty ordinary novel with faux philosophy from the narrator who is a writer (yawn). Maudlin and cliched rather then lyrical and tragic as the blurb insists. I wonder if the author is responding to criticisms of his novel Pip being colonialist by having a character whose ‘difference’ (being a fish) is completely ignored, as if to say difference doesn’t matter. I won’t be reading any more of this writer’s books.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This must be the first book I’ve finished in ages … maybe a year? I was looking for a nz book to read while staying here for a bit. This was a random pic but hooked me. Easy to read, interesting characters and desperately sad situations. The sister - Carla - was really interesting. Absent for most of the novel but it was a bit of a redemptive story for her. The narrator and his mum were swallowed up by a tragic event where she rose to the surface.

[Laurence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointed by this. I love Llloyd Jones' writing, and for the first 200 pages I was anjoying the storlines and the descriptions and waiting for the rays of enlightenment. But the end let me down bacdly, and I was left wondering what, if anything, the author was trying to say.

This is a 3 minus - if Goodreads had half stars, this would be 2.5.

[Georgina Dowd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming back to comment on this book a few weeks after reading it! I loved reading the book, it was really enjoyable but at the time I didn’t feel like the story was that amazing. However, weeks later I’m still thinking about it, or more specifically…him, the fish!!!

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whoa, one of the saddest books I have read in a while. Not bucket of tears stuff, but an underlying grief of lives lost.
Interesting prose style that I didn't particularly enjoy, but still very easily read.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the 'unique lyrical style' and the honest voice of the narrator, Fish's uncle. But I struggle with whether I was missing some vital meanings from what is a pretty tragic story with complexities of love and loss.

[Susan Wilson]

Did not finish. It was such hard work and wasn’t giving me anything back. I want to connect with characters when I read and this type of allegory doesn’t create that form of connection. Not for me.

[Ruby-Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the wa

[ADakota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lyrical, magical and tragic, and refreshingly unique.

[Nicky · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only read one chapter. Didn’t enjoy

[Libya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less depressing than his last book but not by much.

[Kate Reeve · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I really wanted to start enjoying this book, but have given up at the halfway mark. I just don’t get it. Strangest book I’ve ever read.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lyrical, sad, and dreamlike, with a violent grounding in 1960s Wellington