Consonant Sounds for Fish Songs — Traci Chee

Consonant Sounds for Fish Songs is a collection of seventeen short stories that explore the border between what you know and what you can't explain. These characters inhabit a world where turning into a fish is the only sensible solution to loneliness and the search for God is conducted through amplifiers and tape decks. Drawing on the traditions of Borges and Calvino, this collection portrays real-world problems that manifest in bizarre ways. When a boy's father dies, his heart turns into a hollow stone with a singing crab inside it. A madwoman gives birth to a bastard son who walks on water. A man lost at sea recites poetry and song lyrics, hoping his wife will hear and come rescue him. These stories are about death, God, and love, and they are connected by motifs of fish and music that resonate throughout the collection, transforming what you read as you read it. Because fish are signs of both life and death, and music is for joy and mourning and monsters alike.