Why Fish Don't Exist

I don't know how to review this book. I actually finished it a few days ago, and was determined to write a review for it, but procrastinated because I'm not really sure what to say about it. It's a journey, and the journey is best left discovered. It's part memoir, dealing with author Lulu Miller's ending of a bad relationship and her existential crisis that follows. It's part biography of Stanford founding President/champion of eugenics David Starr Jordan, who catalogs hundreds of species of fish. Miller becomes fascinated with Jordan and starts learning more about him in an attempt to learn who she wants to be. It's part zoology, examining the nature and etymology of “fish”. It's part sexual identity discovery, as Miller grapples with coming to terms with hers. But the real magic of this book is how it is more than the sum of its parts; each of these aspects come together to crescendo in a very thought-provoking and moving ending. I basically highlighted most of the last chapter, as poignant sentence after poignant sentence washed over me. Once you understand why fish don't exist, you learn why Miller sat down to write this in the first place. This book is short, and you should read it.

My oldest sister had no problem letting go of the fish. She let the whole category slide right out of her hand. When I asked her why it was so easy for her, she said, “Because it's a fact of life. Humans get things wrong.” She said people have been wrong about her, time and time again, for whole life. She's been misdiagnosed by doctors, misunderstood by classmates, by neighbors, by our parents, by me. “Growing up,” she told me, “is learning to stop believing people's words about you.”

And then I consider the fish. The fact that fish don't exist. I picture a silvery fish dissolving in my hand. If fish don't exist, what else don't we know about our world? What other truths are waiting behind the lines we draw over nature? Could clouds be animate? Who knows. On Neptune, it rains diamonds; it really does. Scientists figured that out just a few years ago. The longer we examine our world, the stranger it proves to be.