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Salt Fish Girl
I just finished reading Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai. The story follows Miranda, a girl in a dystopian future, and her memories/incarnations/hallucinations? of being Nu Wa and a girl in 1800's China... and her girlfriend, The Salt Fish Girl. The writing is deeply evocative, literally sensuous, scent, food, texture, everything just comes alive in the writing.
Lai balances all the futuristic and mythical with a very down to earth banality- people trying to live their lives, people making mistakes... but also the banality of evil- nothing ever feels safe, it's all fleeting. This happens without being hamfisted, and what isn't described or explained leaves a combination of mystery and unease. It never goes for the cheap threats, everything is looming and terrifying more if you think about context, rather than any specific bit that is written in the narrative.
It manages to hit on a lot of things, lesbian love, patriarchy, medical experimentation, cultural assimilation, white approval, the ways in which folks internalize and oppress each other and themselves, without getting heavy handed or stupid with it.
I think the book is a 4/5, though I don't know if I'd be up to reading it again. I generally like light, fluffy fiction, and while this is a quick read, the sense of unease in the book sticks with you.
*******
Visceral reaction time:
Non-consensual medical experimentation! Mass human exploitation! HORRIFYING. I mean, those things are horrifying and I found Lai managed to address them without making it into a show. BUT GUH.
The most horrifying part of the whole book is realizing that a white man is mass cloning asian women for sweatshop work and sex toys. GUGHGHGHGHGHGHG. The fact that he literally decides some are, or aren't human based on their obedience to him. AGGGGH.
The other aspect which I found added deeply to my feeling disturbed in reading it is Miranda's continuous walking into bad situations - it wasn't even like a mistake here or there, but almost like constantly choosing to put herself into horrible places for exploitation. Especially as terrible as the world around her is painted, the repeatedly running for the next person to exploit her really made it hard to read at times.
The end kinda nails in my weird feeling about it all. The last 30 pages are more like material to set up more conflicts, and then it ends without any closure. The part that wigs me out the most is, that a) woman having baby as a climax is pretty wack, and b) the pregnancy issue is pretty left field to begin with.
A friend who loaned me the book said he felt like Lai just didn't know what to do and ended the story, and it definitely has that feeling to me, especially how tightly packed the datadump is at the end of the book.
Lai balances all the futuristic and mythical with a very down to earth banality- people trying to live their lives, people making mistakes... but also the banality of evil- nothing ever feels safe, it's all fleeting. This happens without being hamfisted, and what isn't described or explained leaves a combination of mystery and unease. It never goes for the cheap threats, everything is looming and terrifying more if you think about context, rather than any specific bit that is written in the narrative.
It manages to hit on a lot of things, lesbian love, patriarchy, medical experimentation, cultural assimilation, white approval, the ways in which folks internalize and oppress each other and themselves, without getting heavy handed or stupid with it.
I think the book is a 4/5, though I don't know if I'd be up to reading it again. I generally like light, fluffy fiction, and while this is a quick read, the sense of unease in the book sticks with you.
*******
Visceral reaction time:
Non-consensual medical experimentation! Mass human exploitation! HORRIFYING. I mean, those things are horrifying and I found Lai managed to address them without making it into a show. BUT GUH.
The most horrifying part of the whole book is realizing that a white man is mass cloning asian women for sweatshop work and sex toys. GUGHGHGHGHGHGHG. The fact that he literally decides some are, or aren't human based on their obedience to him. AGGGGH.
The other aspect which I found added deeply to my feeling disturbed in reading it is Miranda's continuous walking into bad situations - it wasn't even like a mistake here or there, but almost like constantly choosing to put herself into horrible places for exploitation. Especially as terrible as the world around her is painted, the repeatedly running for the next person to exploit her really made it hard to read at times.
The end kinda nails in my weird feeling about it all. The last 30 pages are more like material to set up more conflicts, and then it ends without any closure. The part that wigs me out the most is, that a) woman having baby as a climax is pretty wack, and b) the pregnancy issue is pretty left field to begin with.
A friend who loaned me the book said he felt like Lai just didn't know what to do and ended the story, and it definitely has that feeling to me, especially how tightly packed the datadump is at the end of the book.