Elizabeth Lim’s dual-timeline historical fantasy, Fishbone Cinderella, follows three generations of women who must navigate heartbreak, secrets and a curse in order to heal as a family.
Ha Yut Ying grows up during the 1940s Japanese occupation of China and is sent to her estranged father in Hong Kong by her mother, Lei Yuk Fong, in hopes of improving her luck. After a series of traumatic events in her father and stepmother’s household, Yut Ying learns she can become invisible, and she utilizes this newfound ability to try to escape her unfortunate upbringing. But by the time Yut Ying’s daughter, Marigold, is an adult, that power has become a curse, and Marigold must collaborate with her mother and grandmother in 1980s Hong Kong to save Yut Ying.
Lim’s adult fiction debut (she’s the author of acclaimed YA novels Spin the Dawn and Six Crimson Cranes, among others) was clearly inspired by fairy tales, folklore and mythology—especially the Cinderella-esque Chinese folktale of Yeh Shen. But this is a fully realized, unique world rather than a standard retelling. Even though readers are explicitly told the tale of Yeh Shen in the story, there are so many well-planned, surprising twists and turns.
But beyond its fairy-tale surface, Fishbone Cinderella is a haunting narrative of intergenerational trauma, and the lengths that Marigold will go to in order to heal her mother, her grandmother, herself and future members of their family. Lim poignantly explores family pain—trauma both inherited and inflicted—through lush, gorgeous prose. None of these women is wholly angelic or wholly demonic and, thus, Lim humanizes fairy-tale archetypes into three-dimensional people, informed by the eras and history they live through. This approach to her protagonists is complemented by her ability to craft terrifying but realistic villains, which is nearly uncanny.
Fishbone Cinderella takes readers on a ride through heartache and heartbreak, death-defying bravery and quiet moments of reflection. Its multiple coming-of-age stories show that no matter how far we travel from our roots, we are bound to carry the influence of our family’s personal story in our bones, for better or for worse. But, like Marigold, we can break a curse, a cycle of trauma, in order to heal ourselves and those we love.