“The Magic Fish” is a mesmerizing tale that showcases the power of stories. Trung Lê Nguyễn brings to life a story of a young man discovering himself, but struggling to share it with those closest to him. Nguyễn depicts the realities of immigrant life in a way that is honest and touching, and grapples with multiple issues surrounding identity. By carefully integrating the universal language of fairy tales into the grand narrative, Nguyễn delivers a tale filled with struggle, finding common ground, and ultimately, hope.
Written, Illustrated, Colored, & Lettered by Trung Lê NguyễnCover by Trung Lê NguyễnTiến and his mother Helen bond over their shared love of fairy tales. They love to sit and read them together. Despite their closeness, Tiến has a secret that he doesn’t feel like he can share with her – he is gay. Will Tiến be able to express his true self to Helen?
What initially drew me to “The Magic Fish” was how beautiful the art is. I was first exposed to Nguyễn through their sublime work in “Twisted Romance”. They drew a fairy tale-esque story of a princess who runs away from her castle only to fall into the clutches of a dragon who promises to protect her from the outside world. As a result, I was fascinated to see that Nguyễn was again in the realm of fantasy. Their delicate, clean art style is perfectly suited to the genre, and my even my high expectations of the artwork were sailed over. Nguyễn might very well be the best artist in their particular niche working today. Throughout the story, Tiến and Helen read three adaptations of traditional fairy tales, and Nguyễn’s art brings them to life exquisitely. Every panel pulls readers into these stories within the overarching narrative. They feel like loving recreations, without ever feeling like Nguyễn is relying overly heavily on readers’ nostalgia from previous versions of them for emotional impact. Whether or not you are familiar with the tales that Tiến and Helen read, they will captivate you.
As alluring as Nguyễn’s versions of fairy tales were, I was unsure about how they would work as smaller pieces of a larger narrative. I needn’t have been concerned. Tiến’s struggles with self-expression are immediately relatable. His relationship with Helen is established quickly through small details in interactions between the two, without feeling shoved in the readers’ face. Nguyễn gives readers a glimpse into the daily life of an immigrant family that is captivating in its ordinariness. Something simple like a mother’s insistence to repair an old jacket as opposed to simply buying a new one, despite some minor protestation from her son, gives both Helen and Tiến depth of character without requiring pages of setup. Once this relationship between two well-rounded characters is established, Nguyễn takes them and readers on a highly emotional and incredibly well-paced journey. It is a journey so worth taking that it would be criminal to elaborate further on it here.
While I knew that Nguyễn could depict folk tales masterfully, what I was not certain of was how well they could depict everyday life. As with my caution about the story, Nguyễn summarily dismissed any limitations I may have held, which were clearly borne out of nothing more than my ignorance of their work outside of “Twisted Romance”. Tiến, Helen, and those around them may be ordinary folk, but their designs are distinct and memorable. Nguyễn shifts effortlessly between the grandiosity of the fairy tale sequences and the more grounded events of Tiến and Helen’s lives. Of particular note in this regard is Nguyễn’s coloring. They use a limited palette which changes when the narrative perspective does. It helps the reader follow whether they’re currently in a fairy tale and through whose eyes they are currently seeing events. This could have been muddily handled, but Nguyễn’s clarity never falters. There is not a dull or unimportant page in the entirety of “The Magic Fish”.
That is without even touching on how important this book is for representation. As a white, heterosexual, cisgendered male, I have been consuming stories about people like me for my entire life. In “The Magic Fish”, Nguyễn tells the story of a young, gay, first-generation immigrant and his family, and reckons with all of the identity crises that may be present in their lives. Nguyễn handles these issues with grace and honesty. These characters are complex, and so are their mental states. Nguyễn shies away from pastiche and easy answers in favor of delivering a far more palpable chronicle of people that readers can empathize with effortlessly.
You don’t need to be a young person struggling with their identity to see the magic and wonder in “The Magic Fish”. Nguyễn is a singular artist, and one capable of telling stories that are both universal and shed light on experiences of groups that are not as frequently seen. Whether the reader is currently following Tiến and Helen in their everyday lives, or seeing the world of fairy tales through them, “The Magic Fish” fills the imagination through Nguyễn’s artistry. It is a story that has a place amongst the established fairy tales it samples, to be read, re-read, and loved across generations.
