Larissa Lai

"... 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. ... 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 ... And as a former Vancouverite, I also appreciated the book's run-down Pacific edge of the future setting."--Amazon.com reviews.

Salt Fish Girl

Karis Ryu

i really liked this one.

it is kind of entertaining to read through the lower-star reviews and see, generally speaking, (1) who is writing them and (2) what the complaints are. "show don't tell" rhetoric often doesn't get at how oration and narration, and conceptions of linear/nonlinear time and the passage of it, occur in other languages and forms of storytelling. also conceptions of "good" and "bad" science when wielded to credit/discredit speculative fiction.

anyway i think that the sparse (but also, like, really illustrative, every detail is intentionally placed) and matter-of-fact manner of this book leaves tens of questions (about the characters, about this odd world, about the rules we have managed to glean and thousands of rules we have yet to see and understand from one read alone) in the wake of each sentence, and i like that. good books ought to leave you feeling like you need to reread and revisit them again. i also really want to read larissa lai's other novels and poems because how else does she play with story!! how else does she play with genre!! what else does she speculate and reveal about humanity!! questions questions

Jeremy Wang

charisa

3.5? 

it gave me intense ex machina flashbacks lol. i appreciated how foreign yet familiar everything felt — names and foods and themes that were graspable, but set against the landscape of a highly fantastical world. i felt myself digging for "meaning" or "the main point", but i think this is one of those books where you have to passively absorb everything first through emotion and reaction. rlly makes you look at fish differently though, hmmm...

Fraser Simons

“This is a story about stink, after all, a story about rot, about how life grows out of the most fetid-smelling places”

Salt Fish Girl is no ordinary offering; in fact, it is very clearly cyberpunk, specifically biopunk. It’s also, in part, magical realism—as it interweaves mythological components. This intersectionality in terms of genre makes for a uniquely fascinating contribution to the cyberpunk sub-genre. 

“I was a sheltered child, living out my parents’ utopian dream as though it were reality. They did not show me the cracks. And out of loyalty and love for them, when I sensed the cracks, I refused to see them. But of course this unspoken pact could not last.”

Miranda grows up in a futuristic Canada that is dominated by corporations while struggling with being a minority. On top of her not being around people from her own culture, she also is born with a strange smell, reminiscent of “cat piss” that seems to wean as she gets older but results in an isolating and challenging childhood. 

“I was a sheltered child, living out my parents’ utopian dream as though it were reality. They did not show me the cracks. And out of loyalty and love for them, when I sensed the cracks, I refused to see them. But of course this unspoken pact could not last.”

Paralleling Miranda’s story is one of Nu Wa, a creation story of a Chinese goddess who births humankind and eventually chooses to become one, born as Nu Wa. Similarly to Miranda, Nu Wa’s experience is one of poverty and classism that allows for her exploitation. These two stories elegantly depict complex systemic issues, such as stratification of class that transcends generations. 

“When you own nothing, it’s hard to believe you have anything to lose. I can’t say what it was that made me follow the strange woman, except that it took more weakness than strength.”

Nu Wa and Miranda are both taken advantage of by people in a higher class, using their poverty to co-opt their intellectual property and personhood. For Miranda’s family to navigate society more easily, her father tries to trace the source of a rumor that Miranda’s smell is curable. Corporations are also mass-producing human clones as a source of cheap labor, it appears that biotechnologies, both sanctioned and unsanctioned by these corporations, is more pervasive than people are aware. As more and more people seem to be contracting something dubbed the “dreaming disease”—which appears to unlock generational memories—people are committing suicide and disappearing. And Miranda is beginning to remember some things herself. 

“Why shed blood when people can be brought and sold so easily?”

The story is steeped with culture and the cultural issues that come along with them. From the different smell of other ethnicities cause ostracization to family dynamics and the very particular ways the corporations leverage the marginalization of the main characters. A fringe benefit of this authenticity is how the cyberpunk motifs resonate much more profoundly.

“What is the point of honour if it is always used against you?”

jiaqi kang

Enchanting, beautiful, intriguing, but somehow just a little off. Could have gone through another draft because some things just don't really click or miss the mark by a little bit, preventing this book from becoming a future classic.

libby g

Hanako T

Salt Fish Girl is the mesmerizing tale of an ageless female character who shifts shape and form through time and place. Told in the beguiling voice of a narrator who is fish, snake, girl, and woman - all of whom must struggle against adversity for survival - the novel is set alternately in nineteenth-century China and in a futuristic Pacific Northwest. At turns whimsical and wry, Salt Fish Girl intertwines the story of Nu Wa, the shape-shifter, and that of Miranda, a troubled young girl living in the walled city of Serendipity circa 2044. Miranda is haunted by traces of her mother’s glamourous cabaret career, the strange smell of durian fruit that lingers about her, and odd tokens reminiscient of Nu Wa. Could Miranda be infected by the Dreaming Disease that makes the past leak into the present? Framed by a playful sense of magical realism, Salt Fish Girl reveals a futuristic Pacific Northwest where corporations govern cities, factory workers are cybernetically engineered, middle-class labour is a video game, and those who haven’t sold out to commerce and other ills must fight the evil powers intent on controlling everything. Rich with ancient Chinese mythology and cultural lore, this remarkable novel is about gender, love, honour, intrigue, and fighting against oppression.