This lyrical novel...often feels like a fairy tale ... Gilliss’s language is an elemental force ... The prose exhibits as little structure as Tuck’s life. Gilliss’s short, artfully titled chapters...sometimes slip effortlessly into something like poetry ... Lungfish reads with a slowly building terror. This way of life is not sustainable ... The book belongs to what could be called a new category of literature — survival parenting ... Only Tuck doesn’t have the tools to claw her way to safer ground, leaving the reader confounded.
Dramatically transports the reader to an isolated island, the wind whipping and the waves crashing as life rages. Tuck, the novel’s female protagonist, becomes symbolic of the sacrifices many women make to protect the people they love most. With grit, determination, and perpetual hope, it’s a story that hits hard and requires readers to ask themselves how much they’d give to make themselves whole ... Gillis’ writing is visceral and even harsh ... The book is gripping, descriptive, and full of poignant revelations of both the rawness of nature and of humanity. Tuck herself is a force, an embodiment of the ebb and flow of life. At times she is fully consumed by her tasks; at other times she's detached in a way that causes the reader to ache with loneliness. Her resilience is palpable, and mirrors that of the island as she navigates circumstances that would break anyone. As she tries to control the fate of her family in the midst of many things beyond her control, the reader never really knows if she’ll make it out alive. Until the final pages, it is unclear whether or not she can weather the storm. It’s riveting.
Told in lyrical, first-person fragments as lush, brutal, and self-contained as the island itself, the novel’s remote setting occasions an extended study of isolation ... The novel’s lyricism evinces what Virginia Tufte calls 'syntactic symbolism,' in which a sentence’s syntax performs its meaning. Frequently, Tuck’s syntax suggests that she is reluctant to reveal some truths, even to herself. Meaning unfurls slowly like the fronds of a fern.
... gorgeous and formally innovative ... Gilliss evokes the landscape and ecology of the island with a naturalist’s loving eye, yet beneath the surface harmony runs an undercurrent of imminent disaster ... In brilliant and evocative prose, Gilliss asks what we are willing to hibernate through.
Gilliss’ debut novel paints an aching picture of life at the fringes of American society, capturing a pain that is nearly tearing the family apart. The hallucinatory and poetic prose, including gorgeous descriptions of the island’s natural beauty, feels right for a woman who is consumed with hunger not only for food but also for a semblance of normalcy and love.
Contemplative ... Some chapters offer consecutive pages of narrative storytelling; some are very brief and take a more gestural or lyric approach ... Lungfish is a novel steeped in the harshness and beauty of the natural world, in which islands may be both real and metaphorical ... Although this novel's setting is particular, its themes are universal. Atmospheric, haunted, but struck through with beauty and love, Lungfish is one to remember.
Pungent and riveting ... Gilliss shines with a lyrical style and bold, fragmented structure ... Out of a tangible sense of desperation, Gilliss produces a triumph.
Gilliss is an extraordinary writer; passages of her debut novel read like poetry, and others read like a lyric essay, making use of surprising juxtaposition and associations, especially ones—lobster, lungfish—that derive from the harsh setting in which Tuck finds herself. With some writers, such style can disguise plot weaknesses, but Gilliss sidesteps that, too: The peril the family is in keeps the pages flying ... As startling and intense as the windswept landscape the book depicts.
