I'm still a little baffled by the framing device of the story: the point of view is a baby communicating (via the spiritual plane? I guess?) with an elderly woman with dementia. The baby is so young that they're able to remember and understand everything around them, including things that happened while they were an egg, but will soon forget their egg life, and become a regular person? I guess it's a larger point about how similar the very old and very young are? Maybe? And it allowed a fair amount of metaphysical communication, which was quite neat, but in the context of *gestures at recent North American elections* stuff, having an fetus be a person felt a little weird? I'm not sure it added something an omniscient narrator wouldn't have? But Hernandez put way more thought into this than I ever did, and it's not like she's anti-choice.

I did like the main storyline a lot (even if the baby thing was somewhat distracting): a Filipina care worker travels first to Hong Kong then to Ontario, Canada, raising other people's children, and looking after other people's parents. After a series of increasingly shitty placements, she ends up looking after an elderly trans woman, which is very much outside her cultural experience. The relationship between the two women as they get to know each other forms the heart of the book, and is a beautiful commentary on the queer community, bonding across cultures, and the value of queer elders.

I didn't love it as much as Scarborough, and I think being in a down mood meant the ending didn't hit as hard as it should've, but overall I'm glad I read it, and continue to pick up everything Hernandez does. (Which, I indeed have since I finished this.)