Sunday 5 June 2022

 

The Fish, by Lloyd Jones.


 

            The fish is not a real fish.  The fish is the family nickname for him, because that’s what he looks like;  bulging eyes, thick lips and no neck – he’s slow, too – can’t spell for toffee, and this family prides itself on its spelling and its erudition in knowing the Latin origins of particular words, according to his teenage uncle, the narrator of Lloyd Jones’ transfixing novel. 

No, the fish is not Piscean, an ocean-dweller, but his family, regardless of the public front they preserve for the neighbours, wish that his mother, their youngest daughter (Older sister Carla is the glamorous one but she is modelling in Sydney), a teenage rebel in the 50’s well before it was fashionable  had at least known about birth control, thus preventing the birth of a severely disabled and disadvantaged child.  And she’s not saying who the father is.

            Regardless, the family rally around, trying to help the new mum who lives with her newborn in a battered caravan (‘I need my privacy!’) at a motor camp, but she doesn’t make a good fist of things, and Mum and Dad have to come to the rescue after the new mother overdoses and has to be institutionalised and rehabilitated.  The fish and his hapless mother come to live with the family, and his young uncle reluctantly assumes child-minding duties whether he wants to or not as the fish’s mother deteriorates further into self-loathing, despite the heroic efforts of her agonised parents who cannot prevent her inevitable destruction.  Fish’s mother doesn’t want to live.     

            It is now up to Mum and Dad to bring up the fish as best they can and, while he can’t write legibly (or spell) the fish proves unexpectedly clever and helpful in Dad’s scrap metal business, knowing with uncanny accuracy where everything is stored, and the price of everything:  it seems there is a useful place for him in life:  who knew it would be in the scrap metal business?  And who knew that more tragedy would ensue with the death of Dad from a heart attack caused by a breath-holding competition underwater with the fish one day at the beach:  the family reels from one tragedy to another, until good news at last:  glamorous model Carla visits (finally!) from Sydney, and makes a huge effort ‘to get to know’ her nephew, taking him for a week to the South Island – and returning on the overnight ferry ‘Wahine’ – on April 10th, 1968, a day tragically engraved in New Zealand history when the ferry sunk in Wellington Harbour with the loss of 53 lives:  Carla survives, but the fish is never found.

            This is a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions, a tale of woe of a family where everyone has secrets and no-one is anything like the façade they present to the world – and so beautifully written.  Lloyd Jones is a master of prose.  His account of the ‘Wahine’ tragedy was powerful and mesmerising;  whether I wanted to be or not, this reader was right there with those who survived – and those who died, like the fish.  SIX STARS.     

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