Review: Mermaid Fillet by Mia Arderne

View on Amazon

I was definitely punching above my weight when I took on this book but I couldn’t pass on the tag line “A Noir Crime Novel”; noir is my favorite genre. I don’t think I’ve worked harder to read another novel. It took me two reads and an additional 4+ hours to work through it (see next paragraph). I seriously considered not reviewing the book but, given the amount of time I’ve spent on it, by God you’re getting a review. It takes me a while to get to the actual story and I won’t blame you if you skip to that part.

About the title — Mermaid is amagical realism element. Mermaids swim off the coast of Cape Town. More rare than perlemoen (abalone), their tails are so tender you can cut them with a styrofoam knife. Like perlemoen, they are harvested and mostly shipped out of the country. For one of the characters (The Banggat), they represent the unobtainable, something they want, more than anything, to experience. Now that I think about it, mermaid fillets probably symbolize the cravings of all the characters, or not.

The biggest hurdle for me, a non-South African not fluent in Afrikaans, was language. Mermaid Fillet uses a lot of Afrikaans, Afrikaans slang, Kaaps (a form of Afrikaans spoken by Cape Coloured), Cape slang, and some Cape Malay and Xhosa words. The challenge of slang, whatever the language, is that there is a literal definition and a different meaning when used in a slang expression. For example, take the Afrikaans word for bird. In a different context, it can refer to a penis. Or a character says “Don’t take me for a gaai” and I had to wonder why is it an insult to be called a jay bird. I couldn’t find another definition for gaai. Also, and this is speculation, but I think the author often wrote words and phrases the way they sound in conversation but not as they are actually spelled. For example, “lus” (craving) is pronounced “lis” which is the way the author spelled it. It was a lot of fun for me to work through a different language especially when so much of it is informal. It’s like solving a puzzle. I took notes as I read which includes translations, passages I liked, plot points, etc. It is in no way a formal concordance and no guarantees as to accuracy. Mermaid Fillet Appendix.

So, was it worth spending so much time on one book? Absolutely. I enjoyed the writing, the plot, the characters, the structure, and the way the author turns a phrase. I took to writing down sentences and expressions that I liked. For example, a female child sees older girls walking through the park and observes “They move through space differently” and it awakens something in her. There is something very evocative in that simple sentence. When I posted this review to a Facebook group, someone commented "how [the author] gets into the headspace of all the different characters - different ages, genders class backgrounds - that really confirmed the feeling that a new literary talent is being born right in front of our eyes". This nails how I feel about this book and its author — love both.

Mermaid Fillet won’t be for everyone. Arderne calls it noir so you know it will be dark. It is and includes violence, graphic sex, vulgarity, and the PTSD from suffering paedophilia — two of the characters have PTSD from their experience. The paedophilia is the hardest part to take but absolutely essential to the development of two characters.

The first thing that told me I was going to like this author is the “List of Characters” at the beginning. It isn’t the usual dramatis personae you expect to see. The author gives the reader the name, type/characteristics of the characters: age, sexual preference, preferred pronouns, vice, star sign, mental illness, and where they are from. I thought it pretty clever to assign a type to each character. For example, Letitia is of the type “Tief” which means bitch but not just a bitch but a bitch’s bitch. Isaac, a killer, is type “malnaai” which translates to "bad fucker".  One character is only referred to by their type, “Banggat”, which means scaredy cat. This is a slick way to introduce the story.

The Story (finally): Mermaid Fillet is, at its core, a crime story. Banggat is summoned to face three men: a Grootman (big man), a Genuine ou (probably means a real man or real gentleman) and a malnaai. These three men are the lieutenants of the mysterious crime lord,@M16inyourbek (bek=mouth) who only communicates through Twitter DMs. They have been ordered by @M16inyourbek to retrieve a particular Tamagotchi lost several decades earlier. If you don’t remember them, a Tamagotchi was a digital pet popular in the late 90s. Why @M16inyourbek needs the Tamagotchi, how Banggat goes about searching for it, and the reach of @M16inyourbek’s crime empire makes for a solid crime story. Since this is noir you can figure that the characters are doomed

But there is a lot more going on in Mermaid Fillet than a straightforward crime story. I may be out of my depth here but I think the real story is the plight of women, two women in particular but really all women: Letitia, a Tief (uber bitch), and Michaela, a Sturvy (Sturvy is a Kapps (Cape Coloured) expression that can mean a lot of things but here I think it means a girl who is talking proper English, and acting highfalutin. Overlaying the stories of these two women is a magical realism/metaphorical element. An entity called The Goddess interjects herself into the story with first person observations about society and the treatment of women. She stands for all women. The Goddess is capable of releasing menstrual blood from the skies when a woman or child is mistreated. It can be a single drop or a deluge capable of drowning a malefactor. She can even turn the oceans red in extreme cases.

Letitia was horribly abused as a 9 year old girl. She never got help to work through her abuse and never saw her abuser punished.She is severely afflicted with PTSD, living on the thin edge of sanity. She escaped prostitution to marry the Genuine Ou but can’t trust gentleness and only trusts violence which she considers honest. Contrasted with Letitia is Michaela who is a university student studying anthropology and the ex-girlfriend of Letitia’s husband. She also is sexually assaulted which puts her into a homebound depression. Letitia scoffs at Michaela's trauma, considering it hardly worth mentioning. Two very different women but both suffering the effects of being objectified in their own way and both dealing with it in very different ways. Their stories are both powerful and affecting.

There is a somewhat lighter moment at the beginning. We learn that The Bangatt was born wearing Jordans. He is obsessed with owning Jordans and only works to be able to buy the latest Jordans. A scuff mark on a shoe will devastate him. I had no idea there were so many styles of Jordans and the author isn’t exaggerating when she catalogues The Bangatt’s collection.

The fate of the women and the men make this a bleak but compelling read. No one comes out unscathed. Do I recommend it? Yes, but not if you are very sensitive because it is rough at times. You can be empathic toward the character but your tolerance of the worst in human behavior will be a factor.

I would really like to hear from someone else who has read this book particularly from South African women.

Keywords: South Africa, noir, magical realism, feminism, gangsters