Call number
FIC MIL
Collection
Genres
Publication
W. W. Norton & Company (2014), Edition: First Edition, 304 pages
Description
In this hilarious novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet, a honeymooning couple makes friends with a marine biologist who discovers genuine mermaids in a coral reef-and who, the next night, apparently drowns in her hotel bathtub. As a resort chain swoops in to corner the market on mermaids, the newlyweds (opinionated, skeptical narrator Deb and handsome online gamer Chip, the world's friendliest man) join forces with other vacationers-including an ex-Navy SEAL with a love of explosives and a hipster Tokyo VJ-to protect the mermaids from the corporate 'Venture of Marvels' that wants to turn their habitat into a theme park.
User reviews
LibraryThing member mamzel
I had high hopes for this book when I read its description. Unfortunately it fell flat for me. Deb is a young woman about to get married to Chip. After shooting down one idea after another (she doesn't get to pick) they settle on honeymooning on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. Leading
Amazingly, the trip to Virgin Gorda received no real comment though I know how much effort it takes. Imagine, party favors deserved pages and pages of derision but apparently security checks, changing planes, taking ferries, etc. were acceptable. Go figure!
Even when the real action started when mermaids were sighted and a guest disappeared, it was still all about her.
What a shame.
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up to the wedding, Deb moans and groans and shuts down one wedding tradition after another. I totally understand this as I was one to forego all the frills and whistles and had a simple courtroom marriage followed by a dinner party with close family friends. Somehow, though, Deb sounded much more petulant and whining. Not a good start.Amazingly, the trip to Virgin Gorda received no real comment though I know how much effort it takes. Imagine, party favors deserved pages and pages of derision but apparently security checks, changing planes, taking ferries, etc. were acceptable. Go figure!
Even when the real action started when mermaids were sighted and a guest disappeared, it was still all about her.
What a shame.
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LibraryThing member LizHD
Fun to read mixture of the realistic and outlandish. The tone is so tongue in cheek it is sometimes hard to distinguish where the narrative is verging into the fantastical. Sends up mega-corporations, media, and the travel industry in what is (most of the time) a pretty hilarious story.
LibraryThing member delphica
I was not expecting this AT ALL. A couple of newlyweds go on their honeymoon to a Caribbean resort, and discover actual mermaids living in the coral reef. The resort wants to turn the mermaids into a commercial attraction, our couple and their friends want to stop them. So.
This is one of those
But, thank goodness for Chip, the newlywed husband, because I started to like him, and kept with it. The second half of the book really picked up -- not even in terms of plot, but it simply seemed more engaging. The reading felt much easier. I was thinking, okay, this is a solid three stars.
And THEN, then in the last two pages of the book ... I don't think this is really a spoiler, but in the in last two pages of the book, the story got completely reframed and I was all JAW DROPPED. Impressive. If you were watching me, the funniest part of the book was probably my exaggerated WHAT THE WHAT face as I went back to read that part again. Absolutely five stars on the wrap-up.
This is one of those
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books that I wasn't very happy with right out of the gate. It's billed as a humorous book (I think that's a bad sign), and while I get why it's funny, it's relentless in being wry and arch all the time. For probably the entire first half of the book, I was thinking that this style would really work better for short stories, and I was tempted to put it down several times because I was exhausted by how wry and arch everyone was. The characters didn't seem like real people that I could like or dislike, it was like listening to people I didn't know shout one-liners over each other. It was that feeling that the book thought itself very humorous. It's like that thing where sometimes people don't get that a big part of the reason that our friends are funny is because we know our friends already, and then you get stuck listening to a line-by-line account of every allegedly funny thing your coworker's friends said over the weekend, and you don't care at all. Book, I don't know you well enough to care if you are that funny yet.But, thank goodness for Chip, the newlywed husband, because I started to like him, and kept with it. The second half of the book really picked up -- not even in terms of plot, but it simply seemed more engaging. The reading felt much easier. I was thinking, okay, this is a solid three stars.
And THEN, then in the last two pages of the book ... I don't think this is really a spoiler, but in the in last two pages of the book, the story got completely reframed and I was all JAW DROPPED. Impressive. If you were watching me, the funniest part of the book was probably my exaggerated WHAT THE WHAT face as I went back to read that part again. Absolutely five stars on the wrap-up.
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LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
Deb and Chip get married, head to a Caribbean resort for their honeymoon, go snorkelling, and find themselves in a ecological murder mystery that places their commitment to each other and the planet on the line. Or something like that. At any rate, Deb narrates and it is her voice that is the real
There is a lightness of touch here that masks a deeper seriousness. And sadness. The latter is can come as a shock but if you look back you’ll see that a lot of it was there from the beginning. Nevertheless, I could have stood a bit more at the end.
Gently recommended.
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charmer here: her wry comments on cruise ships and the kinds of people who populate them; her instinctual fear of and yet attraction to the “heartland” peoples; her friend Gina’s insistently ironic stance (which is really Deb’s own stance); her periodic personality breakdowns; and the kindness that she and others display even in this time of duress. This is a novel with a sting in the tail, but there’s more than enough in what is mentioned above to warrant giving it a go without spoiling anything.There is a lightness of touch here that masks a deeper seriousness. And sadness. The latter is can come as a shock but if you look back you’ll see that a lot of it was there from the beginning. Nevertheless, I could have stood a bit more at the end.
Gently recommended.
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LibraryThing member LauGal
Laugh out loud funny. Raucous honeymoon gone absurd. Delightful and enjoyable read. A tropical romp!
LibraryThing member lilibrarian
On their Caribbean honeymoon, Chip and Deb go diving - and see mermaids. A scientist vacationing in the same resort organizes an expedition to film them. Things get out of hand when the resort management tries to capture the mermaids for display.
LibraryThing member sailorfigment
The narrator on the audio book did a fabulous job! She really captured Deb's sense of humor and the personalities of the other characters. I didn't really like Deb as a person, so it made it hard for me to sympathize with anything that happened to her. I didn't really like any of the characters,
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except maybe the mermaids and they only have cameos. I'm glad I listened to the book on audio because I would not have made it through the paper version. Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
This book is imperfect, but imperfect in utterly fascinating ways. Millet, more than any other author I've come across, is willing to face up to the dilemmas of writing satire within the tradition of realism (or, perhaps, realism in the tradition of satire). As in any satire, some scenes in this
The problem is that this intellectual, humorous approach clashes rather badly with mainstream literary realism. By the end of the book, it seems that we should really be caring for these characters. Poor Gina is only ironic because her mother died young. Chip might mud-run and play video games, but he's a good guy. Deb might be sarcastic, but she's smart and compassionate. Etc...
As many of the negative reviews here unintentionally point out, that's a very difficult problem, and Millet hasn't solved it. The negative reviews all complain that the characters aren't sufficiently likable (well, it's a satire, so...); or the narrator is unreliable (it's the first person, and Deb is giving her opinion...); or the mermaids come out of nowhere (again, it's a satire, not a love story). I was tempted to write a negative review in which I complain about the characters being too realistic, the mermaids being insufficiently bizarre, and so on, but really, what's fascinating is the craft problem of the book. Can anyone combine these two ways of writing? I hope Millet keeps trying.
****
[Spoiler alert]:
Now, in other news, the ending of this book is fairly ridiculous, and a really good example of how to fail at combining the intellectual/humorous/satirical and the emotional/moving/realistic strands. As you may know, Millet ends the book by kind of mentioning, by the by, that the world is about to end. As an intellectual point, it's not bad: these people have been fighting over some mermaids (will they be commercially exploited, or will they be allowed to live in peace under the watchful gaze of big science?), even though in a very short period of time an asteroid would swing by and obliterate the planet. I.e., your petty squabbles about, say, abortion, pale in significance compared to the actually existing problem of environmental destruction.
This is very nicely done as an intellectual point: lest you somehow missed the point that the mermaids were not mermaids, but a deep ecological symbol for nature as a whole, the asteroid should make it pretty obvious (an asteroid strike we could have avoided, by the way, if we'd only worked together). All these people's activities--marriage, mud-racing, mermaid rescuing--stand in for our daily activities--marriage, mud-racing, reading Lydia Millet books. We're wasting time, and the asteroid/climate change approacheth.
It is not, however, aesthetically pleasing. In fact, it's downright silly, coming as it does in the last two pages of the book. How Deb, who is quite garrulous, could have failed to mention the forthcoming end of the world is not clear to me. Also not clear to me is why Millet, a fabulous craftsperson, could have failed to incorporate this more smoothly. I hope that it's just setting up a sequel, but I fear it's just one more fascinating, failed experiment in bringing together mind and heart.
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book exist only to make an intellectual point, and for laughs. For instance: Deb and Chip stand in for any contemporary, socially consciousness young couple, and Millet could set them up as such in any way she liked. She chose the wedding industry and tough-guy mud running, because those things are deeply harmful to, you know, civilization as a whole, and need to be mocked. She mocks them. The mockery is enjoyable. Deb's friend Gina is an ironic academic for no particularly good reason, except that ironic academics (including myself) deserve mockery. And so it goes. There are mermaids because that gives Millet a way to write about, inter alia, feminism, environmental destruction, capitalism, and tourism, all things she has dealt with in her previous three novels to great effect. Only this is much funnier. The problem is that this intellectual, humorous approach clashes rather badly with mainstream literary realism. By the end of the book, it seems that we should really be caring for these characters. Poor Gina is only ironic because her mother died young. Chip might mud-run and play video games, but he's a good guy. Deb might be sarcastic, but she's smart and compassionate. Etc...
As many of the negative reviews here unintentionally point out, that's a very difficult problem, and Millet hasn't solved it. The negative reviews all complain that the characters aren't sufficiently likable (well, it's a satire, so...); or the narrator is unreliable (it's the first person, and Deb is giving her opinion...); or the mermaids come out of nowhere (again, it's a satire, not a love story). I was tempted to write a negative review in which I complain about the characters being too realistic, the mermaids being insufficiently bizarre, and so on, but really, what's fascinating is the craft problem of the book. Can anyone combine these two ways of writing? I hope Millet keeps trying.
****
[Spoiler alert]:
Now, in other news, the ending of this book is fairly ridiculous, and a really good example of how to fail at combining the intellectual/humorous/satirical and the emotional/moving/realistic strands. As you may know, Millet ends the book by kind of mentioning, by the by, that the world is about to end. As an intellectual point, it's not bad: these people have been fighting over some mermaids (will they be commercially exploited, or will they be allowed to live in peace under the watchful gaze of big science?), even though in a very short period of time an asteroid would swing by and obliterate the planet. I.e., your petty squabbles about, say, abortion, pale in significance compared to the actually existing problem of environmental destruction.
This is very nicely done as an intellectual point: lest you somehow missed the point that the mermaids were not mermaids, but a deep ecological symbol for nature as a whole, the asteroid should make it pretty obvious (an asteroid strike we could have avoided, by the way, if we'd only worked together). All these people's activities--marriage, mud-racing, mermaid rescuing--stand in for our daily activities--marriage, mud-racing, reading Lydia Millet books. We're wasting time, and the asteroid/climate change approacheth.
It is not, however, aesthetically pleasing. In fact, it's downright silly, coming as it does in the last two pages of the book. How Deb, who is quite garrulous, could have failed to mention the forthcoming end of the world is not clear to me. Also not clear to me is why Millet, a fabulous craftsperson, could have failed to incorporate this more smoothly. I hope that it's just setting up a sequel, but I fear it's just one more fascinating, failed experiment in bringing together mind and heart.
Show Less
Awards
Village Voice Favorite Books (2014)
Pages
304
ISBN
0393245624 / 9780393245622