But Fish is alive. His big old carp gills clutch and lick every tiny trace of oxygen from the froth of depravity in the inexplicably determinate manner that only animals have. He will have nothing to do with this household. And later that evening, once Dad is gone, they’ll hold a small party to celebrate his resurrection, because they had assumed—as was natural in these circumstances—that he was dead, or near enough to death to be called dead, having near-death visions, as the dead are wont: that small pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel and visions of an existence as a fish in some other ethery world, a better world for a fish, with fresh clear water bursting with oxygen and other carp large and small in communal bliss and just enough muck and mud for good pickings. After the celebration, before bedtime, they’ll cover the top of the clean tank in plastic wrap and, working together, moving slowly with the unison of pallbearers, being careful not to slosh the water, carry it down the stairs to the family room, where with a soft patter of congratulatory applause they’ll present Fish with a new home, right next to the television set.

About the Author

DAVID MEANS’S previous book, Assorted Fire Events, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Secret Goldfish was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, Esquire, McSweeney’s, and numerous other publications. Born and raised in Michigan, he now lives in Nyack, New York, with his wife and twins.

Praise

From the reviews of The Secret Goldfish:

‘There’s something exquisite and deeply moral about Means’s unflinching vision…The short story is his natural medium; in his hands, it seems as elemental a form as the landscape from which he patiently carves it…He takes you places you don’t want to visit, but makes you understand why you have to go there’

Daily Telegraph

‘Means is a fine writer, superior to many of his more famous contemporaries…His prose is often masterful. The way he handles small, incidental observations is particularly relishable…He knows exactly how to conjure up vivid realities with a minimum of words’

MICHEL FABER, Guardian

‘Run out and buy a copy now…Means is menacingly funny, profound, relentless, unnervingly original and capable of seeing life, particularly its tiny, unforgiving details, with a clarity that borders on the surreal. The unsaid is written, eloquently and graphically, in narratives that achieve the impact of chilling visions’

EILEEN BATTERSBY, Irish Times

‘The prose is never less than beautiful, the images strangely tender’

Independent on Sunday

‘Thrilling lyricism…Means’s language offers an exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American reality. Sentences gleaming with lustre are sewn throughout the stories’

JAMES WOOD, London Review of Books

‘Profound and superbly structured stories…Means’s fidelity to language, his ruthless self-editing and disdain for cliché ensure that this collection has a clarity and authenticity which transcends geographical location…Reading these stories is like being resensitised, woken up to the astonishing possibilities of language’