The Fish Child

Style and Technique

Lucía Puenzo’s style in "The Fish Child" is marked by subtle lyricism and piercing directness, creating a unique atmosphere of uncertainty and unease. The language is rich in metaphors, images of water and light that seem to dissolve the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between life and death. The author skillfully employs interior monologue, allowing the reader to enter the most intimate corners of the heroine’s mind, to feel her fears, desires, and guilt. The narrative alternates between memories and the present, lending the story a fragmented, cinematic dynamism. Puenzo deftly weaves symbolism into the text—water becomes not just a backdrop but a character in its own right, reflecting the protagonists’ inner transformations. Literary devices such as recurring motifs, allusions, and a delicate play with detail create a sense of elusive reality, where every word is laden with hidden meaning. The novel’s structure resembles a stream of consciousness, where past and present merge into a single fabric, and the narrative unfolds not linearly but in waves, following the inner logic of feelings and memories.