Fishbone Cinderella
In this absorbing family saga, we meet two fascinating women: Yut Ying, born in Guangdong in 1933, and her daughter, Marigold, born in San Francisco in 1958. Most of the novel narrates Yut Ying’s journey from the war-torn north of China to the handsome middle-class mansion of her father’s second wife in Hong Kong, where the significance of the title becomes clear. Yut Ying finds herself the barely tolerated stepchild of a truly wicked stepmother. She is stubborn, beautiful, and resourceful, however, possessing the ability to become invisible when she needs to. This supernatural element – and the Cinderella plotline – are very subtly applied to what is otherwise a realistic and psychologically rich exploration of class and resilience.
Yut Ying escapes her cold, amoral family and makes her way – via a marriage of convenience – to America and a new life. Through her point of view, we learn about the challenges of assimilating and the cost of keeping long-buried traumas hidden. Marigold, like her mother and grandmother, has an uncanny ability that takes the form of unwanted visions of a person’s past when she touches them. This leads her to study medicine and also thwarts her first love. Mother and daughter journey back to Hong Kong in 1980, where Yut Ying’s power to “disappear” has become life-threatening, and Marigold must discover the source of her mother’s pain before she loses her.
Lim’s prose is lyrical and the voices of her characters come through powerfully, creating a page-turner that beautifully balances the story’s magical realism with a sensory feast of detail about the food, music, houses, and landscapes that enrich the family’s lives. This is Lim’s first novel for adults, and she is as successful as Amy Tan or Lisa See at illuminating the lives of Chinese women throughout the ages.
