Review: 'The Fish' by Joanne Stubbs

Our world can feel so secure, with every day following neatly after the previous one. Some things seem stable and secure. So what happens when suddenly, fish start leaving the ocean behind for jaunts on the land? What has changed? And will everything keep changing, or will we find a way to turn things back? Thanks to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay.

Pub. Date: 10/6/2022
Publisher: Fairlight Books

'There is a fish on the sand; I see it clearly. But it is not on its side, lying still. It is partly upright. It moves. I can see its gills, off the ground and wide open. It looks as though it’s standing up.'

A few decades into the twenty-first century, in their permanently flooded garden in Cornwall, Cathy and her wife Ephie give up on their vegetable patch and plant a paddy field instead. Thousands of miles away, expat Margaret is struggling to adjust to life in Kuala Lumpur, now a coastal city. In New Zealand, two teenagers marvel at the extreme storms hitting their island.

But they are not the only ones adapting to the changing climate. The starfish on Cathy’s kitchen window are just the start. As more and more sea creatures begin to leave the oceans and invade the land, the new normal becomes increasingly hard to accept.

Climate change is bound to have an immense impact on our lives in the coming decades. Especially coastal communities will be affected and, to be very honest, this is not being properly addressed by our governments or by international bodies. With all of that on the horizon, one could ask what the point of writing books about it is. Well, storytelling is how we engage with the world around us, how we ask hard questions, and how we prepare ourselves for difficult choices. The genre of 'Climate fiction', or Cli-Fi, has arisen over the past decade or two and is used in reference to books which engage with climate change. The term Cli-Fi can apply to a pretty wide selection of books, most of them speculative in nature, from the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopian, and Lit-Fic genres. The Fish would also fall under this umbrella term, set in our own world as it is. In her novel, Joanne Stubbs steps ever so slightly into our future, where coastal communities across the world are already threatened and humans have made some efforts to address their impact on the world. Stubbs' novel focuses mostly on the emotional and psychological impact of climate change on humans, so on the way in which it will affect the way we see our own place in the world, for example, rather than the actual consequences. I think for that it is very interesting and many of those aspects are well done by Stubbs. If you're looking for a novel to dive deep into climate science or to be unforgiving in its judgement, though, this is not that book. 

The Fish is told through three different perspectives. We start with Cathy, who lives on the coast in Cornwall with her wife, Ephie, who is a marine biologist. They are very happily married, but the sudden appearance of fish who move onto land cause friction in their marriage. Where they are fascinating things to be studied for Ephie, the fish cause a deep unease in Cathy. The second storyline follows Ricky and his friend Kyle who live in New Zealand and are in their final years of high school. They're young, dealing with growing up in a changing world, and when the fish begin to appear it forces them even further to consider where they want to go in life. The final storyline focuses on Margaret, an American expat who lives in Kuala Lumpur. She finds joy in her faith and her missionary work, but the appearance of the fish is something she cannot overlook and it causes a crisis of faith and trust, which she cannot shake. I really liked the way in which Stubbs employed these different storylines. The characters are united by certain common experiences, like a major, world-wide storm which sets off the fish-weirdness, but  due to their differing locations and backgrounds, the characters are each affected in different ways. The storylines did feel a little unequal to me. I became very fond of Cathy and Ephie almost immediately and it felt like they had to most extensively sketched-out backstory and characters. Ricky and Kyle were also interesting because this story highlighted the way in which climate change affects the young, whose lives are still in front of them. They either give in to the doom of a changing world, or choose to make changes where they can. To be entirely honest, Margaret's storyline did not hit for me. On the one hand I appreciated the way in which Stubbs showed how an event like this can shake someone's faith and understanding of the world. On the other, however, I get the ick a little from the conviction that comes out of missionary work. This is a personal thing, but it meant that I wasn't as invested in Margaret's story line, even though it had a lot to offer. I think I would have preferred, however, to get a perspective from someone actually from Kuala Lumpur, for example, rather than an expat's perspective.

This is Joanne Stubbs' debut novel and I really enjoyed the premise of her novel. She's got some great ideas going on. Her characterisation is, across the field, also very well done. As I said above, some of her characters truly shine and she has a great eye for the little details that make a character come alive. The Fish is not a long novel, clocking in at roughly 250 books, and the pace is solid. Rather than getting detailed descriptions of everything, we hop from one perspective to another and get insights into specific moments. For me, the writing felt a little dialogue-heavy and there are some seemingly relevant story threads which aren't resolved. I did like the way in which The Fish attempted to tackle something as massive as climate change and the disastrous impact it will have on coastal communities through an attention grabbing premise like "fish walking on land". It catches a reader and then tries to build from there. I did feel that, considering the novel takes place at a moment when coastal communities are already affected by rising ocean-levels, that the impact is relatively mild. I appreciate that Stubbs didn't want to write a climate dystopian novel, so I'm not expecting a high body count, but the novel felt surprisingly cozy at times, considering the themes we're playing with. For a debut novel, however, I think The Fish shows a lot of promise and I'd definitely pick up future works by Joanne Stubbs.

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

The Fish has an intriguing premise and engages with the impact of climate change on different coastal communities. While the storylines are a bit unbalanced and not everything feels fully addressed by the end, I did enjoy the novel.