Scan barcode
A review by midici
Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai
3.0
This is a story about stink, after all, a story about rot, about how life grows out of the most fetid-smelling places...
This book is one that circles around itself, moving back and forth between times and places, spiraling in towards a murky center. Nu Wa/Miranda is not a heroic protagonist. As a creator she is faulty and lonely, desperate to give life and to live life as well. As a mortal she still embodies those traits, always grasping for more: more experiences, more love, more everything.
There's a lot that could be said. There's messages about capitalistic ideas of property and ownership that are slowly becoming integrated into biological concepts like DNA (and within the book, people as well). There is the notion of what it means to be a person, how life regenerates and renews and adapts without ever fully letting go of the past. And I'm sure there's a bunch more that I'm missing.
It's not an easy read, or an easily understood one, but it's intriguing and beguiling nonetheless.
This book is one that circles around itself, moving back and forth between times and places, spiraling in towards a murky center. Nu Wa/Miranda is not a heroic protagonist. As a creator she is faulty and lonely, desperate to give life and to live life as well. As a mortal she still embodies those traits, always grasping for more: more experiences, more love, more everything.
There's a lot that could be said. There's messages about capitalistic ideas of property and ownership that are slowly becoming integrated into biological concepts like DNA (and within the book, people as well). There is the notion of what it means to be a person, how life regenerates and renews and adapts without ever fully letting go of the past. And I'm sure there's a bunch more that I'm missing.
It's not an easy read, or an easily understood one, but it's intriguing and beguiling nonetheless.