A review by innerweststreetlibrarian
The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Another finish this week from my recent street library haul! The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe is a novella, and I went into it pre-warned that it’s quite upsetting. The story is taken from a character in W. Somerset Maugham’s book The Four Dutchmen which I have not read and don’t think I particularly want to after reading this. 
This is a story about collateral damage, the violence of colonisation, and the abuse of women and naive/young/ignorant poor women in particular.  It’s also very evocative of a time and place in history, I think the author has done a beautiful job of setting the scene for this tragedy. 
I haven’t read many “inspired by” works, so this is a relatively unexplored genre for me. I have thought many times in the past that I would love to watch an action film with a gratuitously high body count that takes some time during the film or maybe at the end to humanise the casualties, show the obituary of gang member number 4 or share family photos of evil henchman 10 at his mum’s birthday party etc. This book does exactly that for the poor ‘Malay trollope’ of the original book, restoring her humanity. 🌺🌺🌺🌺
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