"There was something to be envied in that. In a world where nothing was familiar, everything was new. And if you can't recall the previous steps in your journey, won't you assume you've just been standing still? If you can't remember living yesterday, then isn't your life only one day long?"
Denis Johnson's post-apocalyptic tale is fully imagined, a mythical and meandering portrait of the life fashioned by los desechados -- the discarded or rejected as a result of nuclear fallout.
"They'd always been confident that the sea would bring home a warrior, that the sand would whirl into the shape of a President, and that from time to time in their lives people would be met with who would show them the way. But they'd expected to meet these figures only in dreams."
"Fiskadoro" peddles in deja vu, exploring the symbolism of naming in a society where names convey importance. Small communities crop up in the former Florida Keys, featuring a hybrid language, the abandonment of clothing, and the embracing of mystical belief.
"They came around and for once stood quietly in one place, tipping their heads, closing their eyes, and listening as if this music came from far away, or as if they were remembering it fondly from a time in their lives more sensible and beautiful than this one."
With similarities to "Station Eleven," imagery plays an outsized role, encapsulated by a truly harrowing depiction of being lost in the ocean. The dissonance and fever-dream quality of the novel are not universally appreciated, but lend "Fiskadoro" a unique quality.
"It's an odd case of a book that succeeds in everything but its subject -- or at least is marred by the shadow of its very premise," wrote Eva Hoffman of the New York Times.
While the title character struggles to come of age in an era of recurrent loss, Fiskadoro eventually takes a back seat to the driven Mr. Cheung and his mother, Grandmother Wright. As we follow their yearnings and recollections, we become lost in their quests for dignity in a world stripped of purpose, meaning, and attachment.
"With some anxiety about being so direct, he got right to the question. He pointed off toward the northern horizon as far as their vision would carry, and brought his finger around in an arc through the chambers of the sky over the Ocean and held it out to the south. 'I don't know what es,' he said.
"His teacher seemed to understand. 'I don't either,' he told Fiskadoro, 'but we're here.'"
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