Fish-Hair Woman is a novel of many rooms running between love and war. In 1987 the Philippine government fights a total war against communist insurgency. The village of Iraya is militarised. The days are violent and the nights heavy with fireflies in the river where the dead are dumped. With her twelve-metre hair, Estrella the Fish-Hair Woman trawls the corpses from the water, which now tastes of lemongrass. She falls in love with the visiting Australian writer Tony McIntyre who disappears in the conflict.
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 La
“The language and imagery is evocative; the tropics are dense, humid and gorgeously drawn. Just when the book verges on too much lushness, a sense of unease creeps back into the writing with its harsh, honest recounting of the ‘total war’ in the Philippines. Fans of Barbara Kingsolver’s fiction, early Isabel Allende and those interested in South-East Asian politics will appreciate this book.” —
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About the Author
Merlinda Bobis is a contemporary Philippine Australian writer, dancer, visual artist and academic. Born in Legaspi City in the Philippines, Merlinda completed her BA at Aquinas University and completed her post-graduate studies at the University of St Thomas and the University of Wollongong, where she went on to lecture in creative writing. She is now an honorary Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University. Merlinda is the recipient of multiple awards including a shortlisting for The Age Book of Year Award in 1999. In 2000 she was awarded the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Collection of Australian short stories for White Turtle and in 2016 Merlinda’s novel Locust Girl: A Love Song, was awarded the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction.
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