Reading: Fish!

Ida Keogh's debut novella, Fish!, is set in a near future where wars beneath the ocean have displaced vast numbers of merfolk from their traditional homes in the deep trenches to the shallower European continental shelf, and in particular the waters around Britain. The novella has a mosaic structure, with multiple narrators identified only by role ("the reporter", "the artist", "the journalist"); it builds a many-faceted picture of how human and merfolk societies interact and influence each other over a decade or so, but also allows us to follow a handful of individual stories through the narratives of those they interact with.

I thought this was an incredibly accomplished debut - each of the voices is clearly distinct from the others, and the balance between the bigger picture and the individual stories is perfect. The echoes of current issues in society (not just around immigration and the treatment of refugees; Keogh's merfolk are genderfluid, so gender issues and queerness also come up) are very much present without ever feeling like they're being hammered home. Keogh won both the BSFA and BFA short fiction awards last year for her story 'Infinite Tea at the Demara Café'; I definitely think she's one to watch.