Barnum is not the singing and dancing lovable individual we see in the film but instead is a character who thinks only of his own wealth and fortune.Īmelia is portrayed particularly well as a mermaid she has naturally not had the same upbringing as a human, and though she has lived on land for many years, there are still many things that escape her – particularly since she has lived in a quiet fisherman’s village in Maine for the entire time she has spent on land. This is very much a darker tale though P.T. But the language, narration, and structure was absolutely beautiful and completely captivating from the first pages. Barnum and his museum (a character who I’m sure many people are now familiar with thanks to The Greatest Showman). This book was kind of The Little Mermaid with a bit of a twist incorporating the story of P.T. The main thing that stood out for me when reading this book was the writing style it was absolute perfection. Barnum, and he’d been looking for a mermaid. Remarks of this strange and unusual woman travelled from village to village and town to town, until they reached the ears of a man whose business was in the selling of the strange and unusual.

So she stayed with him, and loved him, though he grew old, and she did not. But her eyes had seen inside of him, and his loneliness caught her more surely than the net.

She stopped her thrashing and crashing at his voice, though she did not understand his words. The storm in her eyes rolled into his heart. A woman with black hair and eyes as grey as a stormy sea and a gleaming fish’s tail instead of legs. One evening he pulled up his net and found a woman in it. Once there was a fisherman who lived on a cold and rocky coast and was never able to convince any woman to come away and live in that forbidding place with him. The thoughts and opinions in this post are entirely my own. I received a copy of The Mermaid from Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

The mermaid christina henry summary