Jump from nineteenth-century China to 2044 Serendipity, a walled city in the Pacific North-West, with a narrator who is at times fish, snake, girl and woman. Past and future are linked by myth... and smell. "At first she couldn't place it, and it struck her as unpleasant, like the reek of cat pee tinged with the smell of hot peppers that have not been dried and are on the verge of going off... the smell of something forbidden smuggled on board in a battered suitcase, and mingled with the smell of unwashed underwear."; 0-88762-111-2

[Spring 2003 BCBW]