About this audiobook
A mermaid enters the lives of an English seaside household and begins to unsettle the assumptions governing its social world. Her presence introduces an apparently impossible possibility into routines shaped by manners, reputation and carefully arranged expectations. People try to make sense of the newcomer without fully questioning the desires she brings into view.
H. G. Wells uses the fantastical visitor as a way to examine the conventions of respectable society. Attraction and curiosity exist beside concern for appearances, while private dissatisfaction can make an extraordinary offer seem persuasive. The distance between what characters say they value and what they actually want becomes a source of both humour and unease.
The novel explores temptation, self-deception and the relationship between an established life and an imagined alternative. Its seaside setting allows a social satire to develop around a figure from beyond ordinary experience, inviting readers to consider what an impossible visitor reveals about very familiar human hopes.