Fish in a Tree

Just like with Counting in 7s, I ended up reading Fish in a Tree because of the Neev Literature Festival Reading Challenge. I loved listening to Lynda Mullaly Hunt speak. She left me with so much to think about, both as a writer and as a reader. I’d read nothing she’d written, so I made a note of that and looked out for her books. The first one to come my way was the New York Times bestseller, Fish in a Tree. And I loved it.

Ally Nickerson is the proverbial fish in the tree. She can’t read, and it’s mortifying. So, she pretends that everything she does is a joke. That she deliberately makes mistakes while reading. That she wants to be funny. And each time she does that, she grows more and more vulnerable. Why is reading just so hard?

One day, along comes Ally’s saviour in the form of Mr. Daniels who sees what Ally is desperately trying to hide. He recognises that Ally is dyslexic, and he helps her find her feet, making her realise that the fact that she’s a fish who’s got so far up a tree shows just how smart she is. She’s not stupid, as she’s always believed. In fact, she’s quite the opposite.

More than once as I read Fish in a Tree, I teared up. The writing is just so poignant! Ally struggling to hold back her tears, running away from class, being bullied, finding misfits who become her friends … Everything about the book is beautiful. Like the very best kind of book, I finished it thinking, I wish I could write like that.