Scorpionfish, released July 7, 2020 by Tin House Books, is a lovely novel about the a woman finding herself. Mira, a Greek-American academic returns to Athens to clean out the apartment of her recently-dead parents. While there, her long-term boyfriend breaks up with her. She’s on summer break from her university and is now “in between” multiple relationships, and grieving, all while relearning her place in her Greek family—and having her views of certain family members reshaped as various “scandals” are revealed.
The prose was lovely, lyrical at times. The points of view are split between Mira and the Captain, with Mira claiming a bit more time and a bit more action. The Captain, too, is “in between” as his marriage is floundering. Mira shares a balcony, separated from her neighbor by a sheet of textured glass. She and “the Captain” spend hours revealing their souls, but not their bodies, to each other—a true slow-burn romance.
Having spent time in Athens, including Kifisia, a suburb Bakopoulos often mentions, I found she perfectly captured the essence of Greek life. I remember the oil crisis of the 1970s in which my apartment building in Kifisa allowed heat only one hour in the morning and one in the evening, much as mentioned by Kakopoulos.
Scorpionfish looks at how people define themselves. Mira’s parents left Greece for a better life. Her father fully Americanized while her mother remained lost in the States, even becoming an alcoholic to deal with her loss. Though her family returns to Greece on vacations, Mira is trapped between these extremes. It was interesting to compare Scorpionfish with another recent book about immigration, How Fires End by Marco Rafalà in which Sicilian immigrants refashion their home in America.
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