Cindy M. (RenascenceC) reviewed Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish on + 77 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Interesting plot concept, sometimes beautifully executed, but the lurid details are too much to bear with sometimes, and the insanity of some characters eventually makes it all too tiresome. I did not finish it.
Helpful Score: 1
This is a book so strange that I can't even begin to describe it adequately. At its surface, it is the tale of a man sentenced to life imprisonment, and later to death, at a penal colony in 19th century Australia. It is also about racism, genocide, imperialism, fraud, curelty, love, and of course, fish. In the last chapter, this verse leapt out at me (although the simile won't make sense out of context): "...why when all the evidence of my life tells me this world smells worse than the old Dane's bobbing corpse, why is it that I still can't help believing that the world is good and that without love I am nothing?"
