The Dead Fish Museum

Charles D'Ambrosio

The Dead Fish Museum
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Text Publishing Co
Country
Australia
Published
31 May 2010
Pages
256
ISBN
9781921656347

The Dead Fish Museum

Charles D'Ambrosio

How was I supposed to know that any mention of suicide to the phalanx of doctors making Friday rounds would warrant the loss of not only weekend-pass privileges but also the liberty to take a leak in private?
In The Dead Fish Museum Charles D'Ambrosio delivers eight short stories full of characters who float through their lives and relationships, adrift and apprehensive, tested by failure and strengthened by adversity.
D'Ambrosio’s stories are set against a landscape that is both deeply American and unmistakably universal. A son confronts his father’s madness and his own hunger for connection on a misguided hike. A screenwriter fights for his sanity in a psych ward while lusting after a ballerina who sets herself ablaze. A hunting trip becomes the scene of a haunting reckoning with marital infidelity and desperation. And in the magnificent title story, carpenters building sets for a porn movie drift dreamily toward an act of racial violence they will never fully comprehend.
Set in remote cabins, asylums, Indian reservations and the streets of suburbia, this collection conjures a world that is fearfully inhospitable, darkly humorous, and touched by humanity.

Review

The Dead Fish Museum continues the American short story tradition of perfectly rendered character interactions, combined with Charles D’Ambrosio’s flair for the slightly surreal. And it is these surreal moments that make the stories so haunting. A man watches a ballerina set herself ablaze in ‘Screenwriter’. A young boy tries to understand God and divorce while looking for a Sasquatch in ‘The High Divide’. Each of these stories is unique, and all of them are complete and beautiful in themselves.

Testimony to his skill is shown in ‘Up North’, where the characters are gently fracturing in a marriage that is ‘a constant halving of distance’. His characters and settings are skilfully created, and his proficiency with language enables him to perfectly render his arresting scenes. Foundation powder in a compact mirror becomes ‘flesh dust’. A woman’s knees in faint blue light look ‘as though they’d been carved by water from a bar of soap’.

In this collection, D’Ambrosio shows us stories with a tenderness that can only come from a genuine love for writing.

This item is not currently in-stock. It can be ordered online and is expected to ship in 3-5 days

Our stock data is updated periodically, and availability may change throughout the day for in-demand items. Please call the relevant shop for the most current stock information. Prices are subject to change without notice.

Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.