Lungfish

May 16, 2022
Gilliss debuts with a pungent and riveting story set on a tiny, isolated Maine island. After Tuck’s grandmother dies, the family’s island house is left to her father, but he’s been missing ever since Tuck was in high school. Tuck’s family desperately needs a change from their “strange, failed home” in Pittsburgh, so she surreptitiously moves to the island with her husband, Paul, and her young daughter, Agnes. Once they arrive, Paul, who is addicted to kratom, an opioid herbal extract, goes through an excruciating detox. When he’s mobile, money disappears; when he isn’t, there isn’t enough food or gas, and the mainland is only accessible by boat. In memorable sequences, Tuck and Agnes forage for sustenance, stretching their diets over the summer to accommodate little more than seaweed and mussels (when Tuck throws a starfish back in the water, Agnes screams in hunger). Tuck also makes a bit of money by designing and printing comical bumper stickers, which she sells on the mainland. As she puts off telling the pesky executor about her father’s long-ago disappearance, she wonders if the family could make a go of it through the winter. Gilliss shines with a lyrical style and bold, fragmented structure, as Tuck’s frequent meditations on lungfish, which can go without food for three years and survive in “the hardest place, the intertidal zone,” contrast with her own predicament. Indeed, Tuck’s resilience makes her an indelible creation. Out of a tangible sense of desperation, Gilliss produces a triumph.

Starred review from February 1, 2023

Gilliss's haunting debut, narrated with restraint and precision by Devon Sorvari, follows Tuck, Paul, and their daughter Agnes as they leave their disintegrating life in Pittsburgh for the tenuous safety of a remote island off the coast of Maine. There, they squat in Tuck's grandmother's house which has been inherited by Tuck's unreliable and now absent father. Tuck's situation becomes more dire when she discovers that Paul is addicted to kratom, an herb with opioid-like effects. Without money, resources, or help, as Paul is locked in a seemingly unending cycle of bitterness and withdrawal, Tuck turns to the sea for survival, harvesting seaweed, tiny blue crabs, mushrooms, and mussels, which she and Agnes ration between themselves. Sorvari grimly describes Tuck's desperate circumstances, conveying her initial state of shock with a distant, numb tone. But as Tuck discovers more about Paul's troubles and misdeeds, Sorvari brings her anger to the surface, and it grows into a thrumming force. Sorvari's masterly performance honors the poetic cadence of Gilliss's words, and her pacing--delicate, yet insistent--is exquisite. VERDICT Enhanced by Sorvari's luminous narration, this piercing portrait of a woman pared down to her essence is unforgettable.--Sarah Hashimoto

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