However, stardom comes with its challenges - especially for a girl of Chinese descent in a world where big wig studios are run by literal reptilian monsters. Wei discovers the allure of the silver screen after an unplanned visit to the theatre and has been dreaming of celebrity status ever since. Translated into English, Siren Queen (2022) by Nghi Vo chronicles Luli Wei – a girl born and raised in a stereotypical traditional Chinese laundromat family in the pre-Code Hollywood era (an era marked by the arrival of motion pictures with audio). The two novels’ daughters are left to sort through the wreckage and attempt to make wise decisions.GABY RUSLI WRITES- Do you have what it takes to become the next big thing? If so, would you do anything to have your shot at stardom? Underneath the inexplicable events lie opposing motivations-the wish to escape both love and duty fighting with the desire to nurture and care for others. There are fatherless children fighting for survival, allusion to ancestral violence, and odd metamorphoses taking place in remote locations. In some ways, this surreal, poetic novella reminded me of Australian author Kathleen Jenning’s eerie novella, Flyway.

The Crane Husband opens with the arrival of her mother’s newest lover, an insolent giant crane that demands every bit of her mother’s attention while returning her affection with raucous sex and deep cuts from his razor-sharp beak.įrom this surrealist beginning, things get progressively stranger.

Her father taught her everything useful before he died, and much like Katniss in The Hunger Games, she devotes herself to keeping her small family afloat (and dodging the social worker’s efforts to intervene).

Our unnamed narrator, a fifteen-year-old girl, manages to care for her six-year-old brother and creative but irresponsible mother by skipping school and selling her mother’s artwork. Today I talked to Kelly Barnhill about her book The Crane Husband (Tordotcom, 2023).