The Pisces and other April reads

I finished 10 books during the month of April:

The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan (reread)
The Pisces by Melissa Broder (ARC)
Strange Weather by Joe Hill (audiobook)
My (not so) Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella (audiobook)
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
Crash by Lisa McMann (audiobook)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
All Hallows’ Eve by Charles Williams
The Fifth Assassin by Brad Meltzer (audiobook)
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

I received a copy of The Pisces by Melissa Broder from the publisher (Penguin Random House) in exchange for an honest review. The Pisces will be released May 1, 2018.

Lucy is a woman who is addicted to love. At least, that’s what she thinks (and what the back of the book suggests). After breaking up with her boyfriend and failing to find her way through her dissertation, Lucy finds herself house- and dog-sitting for her sister in Venice Beach. While there, Lucy joins a support group for love/sex addicts while falling in and out of love with a series of men (and her sister’s dog).

I would argue that Lucy is not actually addicted to love. Instead, Lucy seems to be addicted to the pursuit, the chase, the moment of falling. She is a woman who craves the new, craves the hunt. The moment she has the man, or the relationship, she is done and ready for the next thing.

Melissa Broder draws the character of Lucy well, but I did not particularly care for her. Lucy has no problem hurting everyone around her in her pursuit of the things she craves. This made it hard for me to like her. I also struggled a bit with the other characters in the story. Most of the cast around Lucy was thinner, less well-developed, almost wispy. This may have been intentional, as part of Lucy’s issue is a failure to connect and attach to anyone for the long term.

I also did not feel that Lucy really changed over the course of the novel. In the end, she says that she has grown, that she will value and build one particular relationship. But we don’t get to see her take action in that direction. Based on her behavior throughout the novel, and her previous decisions to commit and failures to follow through, I have my doubts that she will really do what she says after this novel is over.

In the end, I wasn’t sure what I felt about The Pisces. It was an interesting view into the mind of an addict, but not particularly a story that I loved, or that followed me when I put it down.

Luck

This would be much more dramatic if the quarter slots still took actual quarters. It’s deeply unsatisfying to swipe my card and watch the tiny number appear on the screen instead of dropping in my last piece of shining silver. I miss the feel of the cool metal, the scrape of the coin against the slot, the chink as it drops into the depths of the machine. I miss pulling the big handle.

So I close my eyes. I let my fingers feel out the single oversized button on the smooth plastic console in front of me. I push.

Now the sounds are right. The chunk, chunk, chunk of reels locking into place. But almost drowned out by the increasing volume of the whooping electronic “music” that’s been added for dramatic effect. Even with my eyes closed, I can tell something is happening. My pulse responds to the insistent screaming of the box in front of me, reaching a stuttering step as the sounds crescendo in a wailing siren and the sound of fake cascading coins.

My eyes fly open. Five black cats are arched on the screen, hackles raised, mouths sneering as they hiss in anger that I have taken their prize. I won. I won a lot.

And I have drawn every eye in the room. Some are above smiling faces, people who are happy to see someone taking money from this building, a reminder that they too might win. Others look almost as nasty as the cats, pissed that my win has lowered the odds that they will.

The only pair of eyes that matters is flat, neutral. Cold. Brown eyes should be warm, inviting. But right now his are mud. Not harmful, exactly. But dangerous if you fall in, forget to keep your head clear.

I watch him as I smile as all of my new friends, the congratulators that have formed a circle around me, patting me on the back, offering to walk with me as I cash out the ticket that the machine has so kindly printed for me. I clutch the ticket tight, not daring to slide it into my bag or pocket. Fingers have their ways of getting into those places. I can’t let this go.

He can’t let me go. He won’t let me go.

I wonder what the odds are that I can cash this slip and make it to the bus station before he has his fingers wrapped around my arm.

Probably no better than the odds of me hitting this jackpot.

But this is Vegas.

I think I’ll take those odds.