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language: English
country: Canada
year: 2002
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction, fantasy
dates read: 1.7.24-9.7.24
Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl has been on my to-read list since at least 2015, and I finally decided it was time to read it.
the novel interweaves two stories: Miranda, a descendant of Chinese immigrants living in the 2040s-2060s in what was formerly the Vancouver metropolitan area and is now a patchwork of corporate jurisdictions and partially-lawless “unregulated zone”, and Nu Wa, an incarnation of a creator goddess who has been (re)born in human form in a Cantonese-speaking village in late 19th-century China (plus a 50-year digression into a timeless, Otherworldly realm called the Island of Mist and Forgetting).
Miranda suffers — or, rather, is deemed to suffer — from a condition where her body emits the smell of durian, presumably related to her miraculous conception when her mother was 65 years old. as the novel progresses, her perspective broadens as she becomes aware, first, that she is not the only person who experiences a condition like this — an inhuman smell, a strange affinity for water, and impossibly detailed memories of the distant past, in her case implicitly Nu Wa’s life / lives — and, second, that the world she lives in is deeply broken, built on new forms of exploitation. Miranda finds herself drawn to a young woman named Evie, an escapee from a factory staffed by clones who are legally not human, thanks to tiny fractions of animal DNA grafted into their bodies, and the two of them struggle to find their footing in a hostile city / world.
Evie, in turn, is — perhaps — a kind of descendant or reincarnation of the titular Salt Fish Girl, a butcher’s daughter with whom Nu Wa fell in love in the late 18th century. everything comes (sort of) full circle.
it’s a difficult novel to summarize or describe! I really enjoyed it overall — it has a certain similarity, in its interweaving of distantly connected timeframes and perspectives, to Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads, and also it reminded me in some ways of Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories (though sans vampires). I don’t think it’s quite as successful as either of those — the last section, in particular, felt a bit meandering / uncertain. but I enjoyed it and would recommend it nonetheless! I definitely want to read some of her other books now.
moods: dark, emotional, grimy, hopeful, reflective