Wow! eBook
Fish-Hair Woman
Author(s): Merlinda Bobis (Author)
- Publisher: Spinifex Press
- Publication Date: March 1, 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 303 pages
- ISBN-10: 1876756977
- ISBN-13: 9781876756970
Book Description
In 1987, the Philippine government fights a total war against communist insurgency and the village of Iraya is militarized. The days are violent and the nights heavy with fireflies in the river where the dead are dumped. With her 12-meter hair, the “fish-hair woman” Estrella trawls the corpses from the water, which now tastes of lemongrass. She falls in love with the visiting Australian writer Tony McIntyre before he disappears in the conflict. Ten years later, his son Luke is reading this story in a mysterious manuscript sent to Australia with love letters. Tony left Australia when Luke was six, and now at 19 Luke is traveling to the Philippines because his father is supposedly dying. On arrival he is caught in a web of betrayal that spins into the dark, magical tale of the manuscript as fact bleeds into fiction. Luke meets Stella, who could be Tony’s lover—or the fish-hair woman—but Tony cannot be found. Poetic and eclectic in style, this epic tale threads a multitude of voices and stories worldwide and ignites a mystery of who is really telling the story.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Bobis’s character of Estrella is a fascinating way to literalise the burden of grief. She is born bald, but Estrella’s hair begins to grow after a near-death experience, its growth triggered by painful memories . . . Bobis tests the reader’s imagination with such a magical character, but crafts Estrella’s voice wonderfully to render her believable. The detail of her unique dialect is exquisite . . . Bobis continues her bilingual tradition of including Filipino language in the text. This gives a transcendent, other-world quality to the manuscript and deepens it authenticity. Although details of the war can be shocking, this is a romantic and optimistic novel that will not disappoint fans of magical realism or Bobis’s earlier work.” —Teagan Kum Sing, reviewer,
Crossing The Boundary: Raising the Issues we Prefer to Ignore“It is a love story, a murder mystery, a story about family and a story about the impact of the kind of self-perpetuating government corruption that so often befalls a country in political turmoil. It’s ambitious and sprawling, and things could quickly go wrong. Fortunately, they don’t. Bobis is a talented, passionate writer who is unafraid of exploring the storytelling potential of the novel.” —
Verity LaAbout the Author
Merlinda Bobis is a Filipino-Australian writer and performer. She has received various awards for her prose fiction, poetry, and plays, among them the Prix Italia, the Australian Writers’ Guild Award, and the Philippine National Book Award. Her books include The Solemn Lantern Maker, Summer Was a Fast Train Without Terminals, and White Turtle. She is also a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Wollongong in Australia.
