The Mudskipper

Author- Ovidia Yu 

Protagonist- Lizhi Wang

Number of pages- 112

Lets get started (Drum roll, please) –

Lizhi is a ten-year-old girl who arrives in Singapore to meet her father’s family, AFTER he dies in an accident. Apparently, he (Michael Wang, Lizhi’s beloved Dad) had been hit by a car whilst he was on a pedestrian crossing, and the obnoxious driver hadn’t stopped to help the bleeding man. Her mother (Juliette Fornier) had promised Michael that they would visit his family in Singapore because Michael wanted Lizhi to meet her grandfather, even if it was after his (Michael’s) death. There is a certain ‘rivalry’ between the two families (Michael’s and Juliette’s) because of a few reasons, which is the reason Michael never went back home after their marriage. Lizhi goes for Mandarin classes, too (for those who do not know, Mandarin is a language).

Juliette, on the other hand, has to go to China with a friend, Jeremiah, whom Lizhi thinks her mother is going to marry after her father’s death.

Anyway, after describing what Lizhi looked like and then describing her family and her mother’s parents AND her Dad’s parents, they move on to the part where she arrives in the place where she is about to uncover an ‘adventure’. Aunt Mona, her father’s sister, is rude and strange and does little to make her feel at home.

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Excerpt –

“Do I remind you of your father?” Aunt Mona asked Lizhi. Without waiting for her to answer, Aunt Mona turned to her mother and continued, “Look at the girl, look at the way she’s staring at me! Well, people were always saying how alike we looked, you know. All the time we were growing up.”

“You don’t look like my father,” Lizhi said to Aunt Mona.

 

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Well, although Lizhi claims that Aunt Mona doesn’t look like her father BECAUSE she looked a little Chinese, I think she said that because she was annoyed with the way this woman acted, which was very opposite of her father’s behavior.

Lizhi finds an accomplice in this large house, though. It is an Indonesian maid, Bwe Bwe (some of the names in this book are strange).

Before discovering a beautifully carved mudskipper (in her father’s words, it is ‘not a fish and not a frog but in between) in a room that is full of forgotten objects, neglected furniture and locked rooms, Lizhi meets a mysterious old person in the garden of the mansion, whom she presumes is the gardener. This man tells her to call him Ah Guan and he offers to take her for a trip to the place where his father loved to eat. Lizhi probably doesn’t think that he’s a creepy stalker who has stalked her father in his younger days, therefore she goes with him. Many things are told to her by him.

In the very end, there is a pleasant surprise for every member of the family (except for Aunt Mona. We wouldn’t call hers ‘pleasant’, to say in the least).

Just one spoiler – Lizhi gets half of her grandfather’s property, which was supposed to be her father’s share.

(Hah, you’d thought that I would tell you about who her grandfather was, didn’t you? No, no, no! I certainly WILL NOT)

Brownies – 4 out of 5 Brownies. Although it was an interesting read, I didn’t find it that entertaining.

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 So how’d you like my first review? Do I need more improvement? Addition of some more important aspects, and removal of exaggerated sentences? Comment below :D