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mess_egress's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
naokamiya's review against another edition
4.0
An incredibly fun and bizarro book that reads like a modernized take on a classic adventure tale in the Melville tradition, with a strong influence of magical realism and a livelier, more accessible sensibility, albeit one that doesn't sacrifice Richard's undeniable poetic register and incredibly percussive delivery. The prose is lyrical and rollicking and brimming with alliteration and rhythm (including rhyme schemes), a lot of it best read aloud for maximum effect, and the events are always some mix of horrifying, absurd, hilarious, surreal, or just downright disgusting, making this thing incredibly entertaining and breezy to read even when it's assaulting you with some incredible grotesqueries. So kind of imagine an epic prose poem got filtered through a diet of David Lynch and Cormac McCarthy (and maybe add a dash of folk horror), and the resulting nightmare child of their combined subconscious is "Fishboy". Light on plot and heavy on atmosphere, character and sensory detail - this is definitely the kind of book you soak into and have to enjoy completely on the terms of its lunatic, unique wavelength.
"Fishboy" is a formal accomplishment even beyond the sheer page-by-page quality of its prose. There's an abundant and colorful canvas of mood and tone on display in this novel, ranging from well-timed absurdist humor suffused with the grotesque (see an axe fight ending with a man split in two yet still being able to deliver a death monologue, or two characters telling a long-winded story in a story while desperately clinging to the side of a ship) to opaque inner monologues and dense, twisting streams of consciousness, with some sentences going on for pages and pages. As I read, I wondered if this was a representation of Fishboy, a child, being involved in situations as absurd and dangerous as the one aboard the ship he embarks on a voyage with after escaping from his home island - children process the world in magnified, magnificent ways, so perhaps all the stranger stuff is how Fishboy perceives his experiences filtered through his child memories? The structure is odd and charming, and combining these momentum-driving narrative devices with Richard's languid and cerebral prose and wacky sea shanty shenanigans is a recipe for a win in my book.
I loved the way Richard illustrated the world in this novel and his bizarro cast of characters' lives on the sea. This is clearly a fantastical world in many respects (possibly even if my previous musing about the perspective of Fishboy is true), but it has enough in common with a baroque 17th century piracy aesthetic that it moreso feels like our world shrouded in a hazy twilight, lost in time. Half-fish half-human protagonist notwithstanding, there's also mermaids, the vengeful (and limbless) undead, ghosts summoned by channeling rituals, guys with superhuman strength who wrestle squamous maritime beasts, and plenty of things appearing in the sea that should not have any place within it. Place names are often unspecified, and greater details surrounding this world are left out or marginal at best, and I really enjoyed this sense of indirect worldbuilding; splurging on worldbuilding has its benefits and good uses, but an approach like the one found in "Fishboy" is quite more evocative in this instance and also a refreshing change of pace.
Not really too much to say about this one; fun characters, beautiful and musical prose, an entertaining ying-and-yang between comedy and nightmare. It's not super deep or anything, and it's over pretty quickly given the momentum of its plot and style, ultimately making it just a really really fun novel. For fans of: writers of the Melville/Faulkner/Conrad DNA, pirate enthusiasts, Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse", fans of surrealism and Dadaism and people who like being spun up in a drunken yarn with someone after having three glasses of whiskey. Very lovable overlooked gem!
"I mist inside your house. I linger in your curtains. I wait until you are asleep so that I can speak to you in your dreams. I am as close to you as the veins in your neck when I Say to you, in my whispering lisp, I, too, began as a boy."
"Fishboy" is a formal accomplishment even beyond the sheer page-by-page quality of its prose. There's an abundant and colorful canvas of mood and tone on display in this novel, ranging from well-timed absurdist humor suffused with the grotesque (see an axe fight ending with a man split in two yet still being able to deliver a death monologue, or two characters telling a long-winded story in a story while desperately clinging to the side of a ship) to opaque inner monologues and dense, twisting streams of consciousness, with some sentences going on for pages and pages. As I read, I wondered if this was a representation of Fishboy, a child, being involved in situations as absurd and dangerous as the one aboard the ship he embarks on a voyage with after escaping from his home island - children process the world in magnified, magnificent ways, so perhaps all the stranger stuff is how Fishboy perceives his experiences filtered through his child memories? The structure is odd and charming, and combining these momentum-driving narrative devices with Richard's languid and cerebral prose and wacky sea shanty shenanigans is a recipe for a win in my book.
I loved the way Richard illustrated the world in this novel and his bizarro cast of characters' lives on the sea. This is clearly a fantastical world in many respects (possibly even if my previous musing about the perspective of Fishboy is true), but it has enough in common with a baroque 17th century piracy aesthetic that it moreso feels like our world shrouded in a hazy twilight, lost in time. Half-fish half-human protagonist notwithstanding, there's also mermaids, the vengeful (and limbless) undead, ghosts summoned by channeling rituals, guys with superhuman strength who wrestle squamous maritime beasts, and plenty of things appearing in the sea that should not have any place within it. Place names are often unspecified, and greater details surrounding this world are left out or marginal at best, and I really enjoyed this sense of indirect worldbuilding; splurging on worldbuilding has its benefits and good uses, but an approach like the one found in "Fishboy" is quite more evocative in this instance and also a refreshing change of pace.
Not really too much to say about this one; fun characters, beautiful and musical prose, an entertaining ying-and-yang between comedy and nightmare. It's not super deep or anything, and it's over pretty quickly given the momentum of its plot and style, ultimately making it just a really really fun novel. For fans of: writers of the Melville/Faulkner/Conrad DNA, pirate enthusiasts, Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse", fans of surrealism and Dadaism and people who like being spun up in a drunken yarn with someone after having three glasses of whiskey. Very lovable overlooked gem!
"I mist inside your house. I linger in your curtains. I wait until you are asleep so that I can speak to you in your dreams. I am as close to you as the veins in your neck when I Say to you, in my whispering lisp, I, too, began as a boy."
mamimitanaka's review against another edition
4.0
An incredibly fun and bizarro book that reads like a modernized take on a classic adventure tale in the Melville tradition, with a strong influence of magical realism and a livelier, more accessible sensibility, albeit one that doesn't sacrifice Richard's undeniable poetic register and incredibly percussive delivery. The prose is lyrical and rollicking and brimming with alliteration and rhythm (including rhyme schemes), a lot of it best read aloud for maximum effect, and the events are always some mix of horrifying, absurd, hilarious, surreal, or just downright disgusting, making this thing incredibly entertaining and breezy to read even when it's assaulting you with some incredible grotesqueries. So kind of imagine an epic prose poem got filtered through a diet of David Lynch and Cormac McCarthy (and maybe add a dash of folk horror), and the resulting nightmare child of their combined subconscious is "Fishboy". Light on plot and heavy on atmosphere, character and sensory detail - this is definitely the kind of book you soak into and have to enjoy completely on the terms of its lunatic, unique wavelength.
"Fishboy" is a formal accomplishment even beyond the sheer page-by-page quality of its prose. There's an abundant and colorful canvas of mood and tone on display in this novel, ranging from well-timed absurdist humor suffused with the grotesque (see an axe fight ending with a man split in two yet still being able to deliver a death monologue, or two characters telling a long-winded story in a story while desperately clinging to the side of a ship) to opaque inner monologues and dense, twisting streams of consciousness, with some sentences going on for pages and pages. As I read, I wondered if this was a representation of Fishboy, a child, being involved in situations as absurd and dangerous as the one aboard the ship he embarks on a voyage with after escaping from his home island - children process the world in magnified, magnificent ways, so perhaps all the stranger stuff is how Fishboy perceives his experiences filtered through his child memories? The structure is odd and charming, and combining these momentum-driving narrative devices with Richard's languid and cerebral prose and wacky sea shanty shenanigans is a recipe for a win in my book.
I loved the way Richard illustrated the world in this novel and his bizarro cast of characters' lives on the sea. This is clearly a fantastical world in many respects (possibly even if my previous musing about the perspective of Fishboy is true), but it has enough in common with a baroque 17th century piracy aesthetic that it moreso feels like our world shrouded in a hazy twilight, lost in time. Half-fish half-human protagonist notwithstanding, there's also mermaids, the vengeful (and limbless) undead, ghosts summoned by channeling rituals, guys with superhuman strength who wrestle squamous maritime beasts, and plenty of things appearing in the sea that should not have any place within it. Place names are often unspecified, and greater details surrounding this world are left out or marginal at best, and I really enjoyed this sense of indirect worldbuilding; splurging on worldbuilding has its benefits and good uses, but an approach like the one found in "Fishboy" is quite more evocative in this instance and also a refreshing change of pace.
Not really too much to say about this one; fun characters, beautiful and musical prose, an entertaining ying-and-yang between comedy and nightmare. It's not super deep or anything, and it's over pretty quickly given the momentum of its plot and style, ultimately making it just a really really fun novel. For fans of: writers of the Melville/Faulkner/Conrad DNA, pirate enthusiasts, Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse", fans of surrealism and Dadaism and people who like being spun up in a drunken yarn with someone after having three glasses of whiskey. Very lovable overlooked gem!
"I mist inside your house. I linger in your curtains. I wait until you are asleep so that I can speak to you in your dreams. I am as close to you as the veins in your neck when I Say to you, in my whispering lisp, I, too, began as a boy."
"Fishboy" is a formal accomplishment even beyond the sheer page-by-page quality of its prose. There's an abundant and colorful canvas of mood and tone on display in this novel, ranging from well-timed absurdist humor suffused with the grotesque (see an axe fight ending with a man split in two yet still being able to deliver a death monologue, or two characters telling a long-winded story in a story while desperately clinging to the side of a ship) to opaque inner monologues and dense, twisting streams of consciousness, with some sentences going on for pages and pages. As I read, I wondered if this was a representation of Fishboy, a child, being involved in situations as absurd and dangerous as the one aboard the ship he embarks on a voyage with after escaping from his home island - children process the world in magnified, magnificent ways, so perhaps all the stranger stuff is how Fishboy perceives his experiences filtered through his child memories? The structure is odd and charming, and combining these momentum-driving narrative devices with Richard's languid and cerebral prose and wacky sea shanty shenanigans is a recipe for a win in my book.
I loved the way Richard illustrated the world in this novel and his bizarro cast of characters' lives on the sea. This is clearly a fantastical world in many respects (possibly even if my previous musing about the perspective of Fishboy is true), but it has enough in common with a baroque 17th century piracy aesthetic that it moreso feels like our world shrouded in a hazy twilight, lost in time. Half-fish half-human protagonist notwithstanding, there's also mermaids, the vengeful (and limbless) undead, ghosts summoned by channeling rituals, guys with superhuman strength who wrestle squamous maritime beasts, and plenty of things appearing in the sea that should not have any place within it. Place names are often unspecified, and greater details surrounding this world are left out or marginal at best, and I really enjoyed this sense of indirect worldbuilding; splurging on worldbuilding has its benefits and good uses, but an approach like the one found in "Fishboy" is quite more evocative in this instance and also a refreshing change of pace.
Not really too much to say about this one; fun characters, beautiful and musical prose, an entertaining ying-and-yang between comedy and nightmare. It's not super deep or anything, and it's over pretty quickly given the momentum of its plot and style, ultimately making it just a really really fun novel. For fans of: writers of the Melville/Faulkner/Conrad DNA, pirate enthusiasts, Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse", fans of surrealism and Dadaism and people who like being spun up in a drunken yarn with someone after having three glasses of whiskey. Very lovable overlooked gem!
"I mist inside your house. I linger in your curtains. I wait until you are asleep so that I can speak to you in your dreams. I am as close to you as the veins in your neck when I Say to you, in my whispering lisp, I, too, began as a boy."
alicep03's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
carlosernesto's review
5.0
The story of a poor orphan boy who runs away to sea, has a series of adventures among a crew of misfits, and returns home somewhat the worse for wear. The sort of novel Melville and Faulkner would have written had they been collaborating and had a supply of hallucinogens handy. The tale Fishboy tells is dark and gruesome, yet also funny and moving, told in a lyrical style full of rich language and set in a surreal yet familiar world of ghosts, mermaids, and strange civilizations. Not recommended for anyone who prefers happy endings.
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