In On Fragile Waves E. Lily Yu has woven a story of shattered lives and the pieces that spiral out into galaxies of their own self-contained traumas and the people and things they pull into those orbits. With liltingly lyrical prose and razor-sharp insight into the lost forest trails grief can lead those who stumble into it mapless Yu cuts the reader to the bone repeated and then holds up a mirror for them to see it all from yet another angle, another echo, another lost possibility that only remains as a bitter aftertaste of a draught long run dry. On Fragile Waves is a story that is haunted just as much by the corpse of a denied future as it is the ghosts surrounding the protagonists. Each page is a lung-searing gulp of air that doubles you over but also gives you what you need to go on living in this world, a world where war and death are not the ends to dreams but just one more shard of a shattered windshield that we as well as the protagonists must learn to navigate through if there is ever to be any hope of arriving home.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
CW: Abuse, Self Harm, Depression