Saving Angelfish

by Xe Sands, Michele Matheson, Michele Matherson

Violence and drug use haunt the characters of this gritty account of the darker world that blisters just below the gleaming surface of Los Angeles, yet they draw together here and there, forever trying to connect. When we meet Max, she's lying on the beach, drug sick and hoping to stay clean for the day. As she flails in her attempts to find her way out of debt and off of drugs, her exhaustion deepens to desperate proportions. Violence and drug use...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0977312763
• ISBN13: 9780977312764
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Tin House Books
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

Love in Every Character

Don't fall for the hype and expect some mere story of drug addict descent and redemption. Michele Matheson transformed my expectations and exceeded them in a way that filled me with delight and hope for her bright future, which is similar to the way I felt about Max, the embattled, reality-defying heroine of Saving Angelfish. The characters who push this narrative of outer calamity and inner crises are drawn in telling, real detail that never crosses into stereotype. There is pain and confusion, but more humor and love than a lesser hand would know how to mix in. I'll admit that Saving Angelfish may not be for the faint hearted, but everyone else will be richer for having read it.

Deserves ten stars.

Having reviewed books both professionally for newspapers and as a hobby on the net I have run across hundreds of first time writers. The great majority have just the one book in them and they are never heard from again. Sometimes thankfully for those of us who love and read books continually. So it is always awkward when a new book comes your way as you want to be kind and you want to be truthful. Michele Matheson makes that easy. Had I not seen a publisher's blurb that this is a first book I would have thought Ms. Matheson an old hand. (She's really quite young.) Saving Angelfish is an excellent read and shows a quality that tells the reader this is a new author here to stay. The story revolves around a young actress who is heavily involved in the drug world. This may seem like a familiar theme, however there is a freshness in the way the topic is handled. Maxella Gordon, known as Max, comes from a broken home that was not typical to begin with. The reader is drawn into not just Max's world but also her mother Phyllis and father Eddie. Both parents love her and their relationship with each other complicates their ability to help their daughter overcome her addictions and ability to return to the real world . Gradually as you read the book you will be presented scenes of events that caused Max to be where she is. Highly traumatic is an attack on her mother that influences all their lives. There are also some of the most colorful, but not necessarily nice, characters who share their addictions with Max. There is a great deal of symbolism in the writing as seen though the eyes of an artificial angel that comes alive at key moment in the story. The title itself, Saving Angelfish, has symbolic meaning as will be evident in one of the subplots and at the book's conclusion. The style used by Matheson is a combination of darkness and lightness in tone. Two things will be obvious about the author herself. She has the soul of a poet and, like the early work of fantasy writer Ray Bradbury. there are poetic type images laced through the story. The book is very visual and the author would do well to turn this into a script as it would make an excellent film. Keep on writing Michele Matheson, don't stop now as you are building a fandom that will be hungry for more. If I could have given this more than the five stars permitted in the rating system I would have.

Saving Angelfish

Who would have thought kicking an addiction would be so witty and inventive? Yes, harrowing, too, but this book represents a triumph of sort of the human spirit. Matheson creates amazing characters, too. A terrific first novel.

An amazing book

This first novel is really astonishing. Raw and nasty, beautiful and innocent. You are pulled deeply into the narrator's world, and as extreme as the life and relationships of a junkie are, the desperation and longing, maybe even the ruthlessness, feels like all of us.