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Title: Saving Angelfish

Author: Michele Matheson

Narrator: Xe Sands

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-27-12

Publisher: Iambik Audio Inc.

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

A part-time actress and full-time junkie, Maxella Gordons life is unraveling fast. Shes estranged from her parents, in debt to the neighborhood dealer, and in frequent conversation with an angel figurine she ripped off from the local Rite-Aid. After an unfortunate incident, Max is forced to sell for another dealer, the vicious, legless Carlotta. Struggling to get out of debt, off drugs, and away from Carlotta, Max is increasingly desperate to find a way out.

Drugs and violence haunt everyone in Maxs world, yet still they draw together: her parents, still holding each other up though their marriage ended years ago; her tutu-clad buyer, who joins them for Christmas dinner; and Maxs own attempt to help Carlottas son Albert break away from his mother.

Honest and unpredictable, laced with flashes of wit and poignancy, Saving Angelfish is a gritty portrait of the dark world simmering just below LAs gleaming surface.

Critic Reviews:

"Matheson's sharp, highly detailed prose thrusts readers in the driver's seat of an out-of-control life." (Publishers Weekly)

"This is a flawlessly executed study of a life that's fully dissolved." (Los Angeles Times)

"Her novel of addiction, of coming close to bottoming outrings as true as any memoir I've read." (Russ Harvey, KQED)

Members Reviews:

Five Stars

5 stars!

Saving Angelfish

Who would have thought kicking an addiction would be so witty and inventive? Yes, harrowing, too, but this book represents a triumph of sort of the human spirit. Matheson creates amazing characters, too. A terrific first novel.

Deserves ten stars.

Having reviewed books both professionally for newspapers and as a hobby on the net I have run across hundreds of first time writers. The great majority have just the one book in them and they are never heard from again. Sometimes thankfully for those of us who love and read books continually. So it is always awkward when a new book comes your way as you want to be kind and you want to be truthful. Michele Matheson makes that easy.

Had I not seen a publisher's blurb that this is a first book I would have thought Ms. Matheson an old hand. (She's really quite young.) Saving Angelfish is an excellent read and shows a quality that tells the reader this is a new author here to stay. The story revolves around a young actress who is heavily involved in the drug world. This may seem like a familiar theme, however there is a freshness in the way the topic is handled.

Maxella Gordon, known as Max, comes from a broken home that was not typical to begin with. The reader is drawn into not just Max's world but also her mother Phyllis and father Eddie. Both parents love her and their relationship with each other complicates their ability to help their daughter overcome her addictions and ability to return to the real world . Gradually as you read the book you will be presented scenes of events that caused Max to be where she is. Highly traumatic is an attack on her mother that influences all their lives. There are also some of the most colorful, but not necessarily nice, characters who share their addictions with Max.

There is a great deal of symbolism in the writing as seen though the eyes of an artificial angel that comes alive at key moment in the story. The title itself, Saving Angelfish, has symbolic meaning as will be evident in one of the subplots and at the book's conclusion.