Fishnet

by Paul A. Toth

Maurice Melnick's imagination has forever painted an underwater world more exotic yet safer than the one above. Now he sees in wife Shelia's smile all the years he spent swimming away from her. He... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932557091
• ISBN13: 9781932557091
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Bleak House Books
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Challenge your reality!

Toth is an exceptional storyteller. FISHNET is a fast-paced read, a true page turner. His characterization and dialogue fit nicely into an ever-impressive novel involving art, madness, and the occasional drunken flashback. This is one novel I've referred to at least fifteen readers. By next month it should be thirty.

Another absurdist must-read by Paul Toth, the online Orson Welles

Paul Toth's second novel, Fishnet, is possessed by the same absurdist humor, quirky incisive vision, and cartoon realism of TV hits Curb Your Enthusiasms and Arrested Development. Set in the sardonically named fictional California town of Mercy, the characters in Fishnet are on personal quests of the most un-Tony-Robbins sort. Eccentric artist/millionaire Maurice Melnick seeks to re-imagine his wife, Sheila, by painting her portrait. But nothing about Maurice is uncomplicated, and Sheila is an unwilling muse. Each are visited by ghosts of their former selves who do more to cast light on the present, than recapture the past. Toth's writing is impeccable throughout, particularly when he describes Jonah, Maurice's alter ego, for the first time: "The figure was tall and white, all stretched bone and kite paper skin. It -- he -- wore a mask carved with the feminine face of a monk born to a geisha, the mouth curled in a smile but not a laugh, eyes crinkled with sympathy." It's soon clear that Maurice's marriage to Sheila is in trouble. Before long, the reader finds that the town of Mercy is also in danger. The mortality of the first seems inextricably tied to the second. The answers to both problems lie in the most improbable of places -- in the hands of an ex-cop-turned-fireworks-technician whose marginally safe/legal displays are intended as bouquets of flowers in the night sky for his dead wife. As the town leaders -- the mayor, fire chief, and police captain -- crash headlong into their own human frailty, it falls to Maurice to use his inherited wealth to resuscitate Mercy. The answer to the town's economic problems is found in a Fourth of July fireworks display meant to attract third-rate celebrities and the trailer-towing citizenry who worship them. In true absurdist fashion, however, Paul Toth weaves a story rife with good intentions, criminal acts of stupidity, gallantry, debauchery, and dazzling, memorable lines, such as this one spoken by aging, cocaine-addled jazz musician Larry J. Phipps: "... by the time I'm done proving I'm a star, I'll be stardust." Fishnet is a highly entertaining, innovative read that no true fan of quality fiction should miss. -- Matthew St. Amand author of As My Sparks Fly Upward & Other Stories www.matthewstamand.com

A surreal tale of the ending of a marriage and the beginning of a life...

Paul Toth's FISHNET is a heartbreakingly honest book about one man's failure to live up to the dream self he, his wife, and his town, have created for him and his wife's failure to live up to her own potential. They are ghosts who haunt one another's lives. But on the eve of disaster for the small town they live in, their own lives and marriage crumbling beneath them, this husband and wife have a chance to save themselves, and their marriage, if they can build a bridge across the great ocean that has grown up between them. A novel of magic and heartache, Mr. Toth creates characters you feel, a story you see, and a world you believe. At once tragic and redemptive, this is a tale of love in all its beautiful ugliness, and the people who worship at its altar. A fantastic read with characters who really speak to you from a place of honesty, I highly recommend this book.