2023/138: The Mermaid of Black Conch — Monique Roffey

2023/138: The Mermaid of Black Conch — Monique Roffey

Her hair was the worst part, a mess of fire and ropes of this and that. Jellyfish had come up with her, clusters of long blue veins. Sea moss trailed from her shoulders like slithers of beard. Barnacles speckled the swell of her hips. Her torso was sturdy and muscular, finely scaled over, as if she wore a tunic of sharkskin. She was crawling with sea-lice. [p. 29]

A thousand years before the story opens, long before the arrival of the 'Castilian admiral', a young woman named Aycayia lived on a fish-shaped island in the Caribbean. She refused to marry, though the men of the village pursued her relentlessly: eventually, the women cursed her to become a mermaid.

The narrator of The Mermaid of Black Conch is David, an old man, recounting the story of when he was a young fisherman in 1976. One day he was fishing alone from his boat and met a mermaid who liked his bad guitar playing.( Read more... )