Fiction The Fish

Lloyd Jones: Text Publishing, $33

This reads like a dark fable, about a mentally disturbed woman who gives birth in a shabby caravan to a son, the fish, a physically disabled boy with no neck, some sort of gills and a gulping mouth with rubbery lips. The baby, Colin Montgomery, is cared for by the woman’s family, particularly his young uncle who tells the story, but Colin – who smells like rancid seawater – has no friends, no social life and worse, he is an atrocious speller in a family of wordsmiths. Scenes of the grandfather and uncle driving in the night looking for the fish’s addicted mother are desperately sad but Jones, a New Zealand writer, rescues the story with lyricism and the tender determination of the family to love and care for a creature they do not recognise. PENELOPE DEBELLE