> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781864711158
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $32.99

Desert Fish




How far will Gilly go to become someone new?

How far will Gilly go to become someone new?

'Gilly. You know we'll die here, don't you?' Pete's eyes are glazed and red-rimmed. 'Yes.' 'Aren't you afraid?' 'No, I'm not,' I tell him. 'I can't believe you,' he says. 'I don't believe you're not afraid.' He wants us to be joined now, at this moment. He doesn't want to die alone. But I mean it. I'm not afraid.

Gilly lives in a drought-ridden small town in 1970s Australia. She's left school but hasn't found a job, it's always hot and life seems a little pointless. Then Pete arrives. Golden-skinned with a kind smile and relaxed attitude, he boards with Gilly and her family and breaks the tension between her philandering father and anxious-to-please mother. Gilly can't help but fall in love with him and one sultry night, she gets what she wants.

A few weeks later, Pete disappears and Gilly finds out she's pregnant. She wants Pete so badly she'll do what it takes to find him and keep him, at any cost. A dark love story, Desert Fish is a powerful and unflinching debut novel.

  • Published: 1 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781864711158
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Cherise Saywell

Cherise Saywell was born in Lismore NSW and grew up in Casino. She studied English and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland and then travelled to the UK for a holiday that accidently became more permanent. She worked as an academic researcher and then in television production before the birth of her first child when she began writing fiction.

Cherise won the VS Pritchett Prize for her short story 'Beef Queen' in 2003 and was awarded a Scottish Arts Council New Writer Bursary in the same year. She was a runner up in the Asham Award in 2009, collecting the third prize for her story, 'The Candle Garden.' Her short stories have appeared in The London Magazine, New Writing Scotland, Carve Magazine and alongside stories by Margaret Atwood and Yiyun Li, in the Asham Award collection, Waving at the Gardener (Bloomsbury, 2009).

Desert Fish, Cherise's first novel emerged out of a desire to try out a longer form, growing from a story idea that couldn't be confined to the parameters of a short story. It was also a way of reconnecting with some of places that resonated from childhood. Cherise was awarded an Arts Council Bursary in 2007 to complete Desert Fish, and has just completed her second novel, Twitcher.

Also by Cherise Saywell

See all

Praise for Desert Fish

Saywell’s writing is confident and compelling. Gilly is a complex psychological portrait of a girl forced into maturity …This book has echoes of Kenneth Cook’s Wake in Fright and the outback, no place for human habitation, is rendered with equal eeriness. The adolescent Gilly, searching for herself in the desert, is a memorable and poignant creation.

Helen Elliot, The Age

One of the joys of being a book reviewer is that occasionally you pick up a debut novel by an unfamiliar writer and realise that this is a major new voice. Pick of the week.

Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Sydney Morning Herald

Crisply written with a lean poetic sensibility and a creepiness that draws you in, Desert Fish is an impressive debut.

Alistair Jones, The Australian

A dark love story, Desert Fish is a powerful and unflinching debut novel.

The Maitland Mercury

Saywell’s simple language is loaded with meaning and, at times, poetically entrancing.

The Herald Sun