Salt Fish Girl

this is undecidedly one of the best books i have ever read. it's a sci-fi, fantasy, critical social commentary, poetry, and product of the postmodern. calling this an 'asian book' or a 'woman's book' limits its scope and depth, a book that delves into memory, both personal and historical. it is also a creative challenge to conventional discussions on immigration and geographic/cultural displacement by exposing the power dynamics in the process. at the same time, however, the circular setup of the novel, the watery motifs, and gendered violence situates the book within women's experiences. salt fish girl is also laden with loss, denial, forgetting and abandonment that is a common thread in an asian diasporic experience. larissa lai's poetic and lucid writing style fits so well with the fantastical yet tactile tone of the book. it is dream-like and yet feels intensely real. a delightful find.

This tale is an inventive mix of chinese myth, science fiction, lyrical dream and biotech nightmare. Laden with themes of love, birth, reproduction and transformation, Salt Fish Girl can be read on many levels -- its a rich text and there is a lot going on in this short novel. Now in some places, I felt Lai becomes seduced by her own talents of imagery, and the narrative flags while she describes say, the colour of pearls, or the mood of the ocean, but that's a minor problem. And as a former Vancouverite, I also appreciated the book's run-down Pacific edge of the future setting. Worth reading and worth reading again, I think.

Lai proves herself as one of the greatest Canadian writers. Salt Fish Girl is a wonderful, fascinating story about two Asian women -one a shapeshifter and the other obsessed with scent and her dead mother- who lived in very different times, but are somehow related. The story will truly capture you and you will not be able to drop the book until you finish it.