I picked up this book by Jennie Liu because I was intrigued by the title Like Spilled Water, and I immediately thought of the Chinese saying 嫁出去的女儿,泼出去的水, literally translated as “a married daughter is like spilled water”. I wasn’t wrong. The story centres around Na, a vocational school student in China’s countryside, when her life is suddenly turned upside down by her younger brother’s death. She travels to the city, where her parents live an extremely frugal life while pouring all their …