Singapore publishing house Monsoon has launched four new titles at
the Singapore Writers Festival coupling two debut novelists, PP Wong (The Life of a Banana) and KH Lim (Written in Black), and two seasoned
novelists, Patricia Snel (The Expat) and
SP Hozy (The Scarlet Macaw). Raelee Chapman reports.
London born and schooled Singaporean based
author PP Wong’s first, and autobiographical, novel The Life of a
Banana is about growing up as what some Chinese call a banana –
yellow on the outside and white on the inside. Wong describes her novel as
primarily about racial bullying and told the audience about her own experience when, at age eight, as a tall Chinese girl with a strong sense of
justice, she tried to break up a fight between to two boys who then began to
racially vilify her. Wong is also an actor, and after describing to a famous
South East Asian film director her experiences of being bullied as a child, he replied:
“Weren’t we all?” This prompted her to begin to collect other horrific examples
of bullying from fellow bananas abroad, and to start thinking about a novel to
encapsulate their feelings of isolation, of not being popular, and not knowing where
you fit in. Wong read for the crowd two very funny passages, in one the main
protagonist, Xing Li, goes shopping with her grandmother and watches mortified
as her embarrassing relative causes a scene on public transport, in the other Xing Li feels uneasy in a school history lesson, when the content fails to reflect her own ancestors' experience.
KH Lim’s debut
novel, Written In Black, is a coming of
age novel set in his native Brunei. Phil Tatham, Monsoon’s founder, and moderator for the evening, pointed out that
so few novels are set in Brunei this one is naturally intriguing. He added that
when Lim was pitching the novel he claimed all his patients loved it - Phil
later found out Lim is a pathologist! Lim himself explained that after an earlier unsuccessful attempt to write a novel he worked
out that for a story to be really successful it should have some basis in
reality. He decided then to pillage from what he knew best – his home country.
He was also aware that barely anything is written about Brunei. Lim describes
the major themes in his novel as exploring self-determination versus
consequentialism, however, he assured the crowd that it is not all grim and includes
much humour - as an afterthought he described Written in Black as Kafka combined with Calvin and Hobbes. The
novel features a dysfunctional family and Lim said that while his own family
are relatively normal (they were in the crowd!) a dysfunctional family made
sense because it meant the main protagonist is not too perfect, and must rise above his problems and soldier on.
The two more established Monsoon authors, Patricia Snel and SP Hozy have both used Singapore as the
setting for their most recent books.
Snel's The
Expat, originally written in Dutch, has sold over 50,000 copies in Holland. It is a story based loosely on news headlines
about human trafficking. Snel said that the story is a blend of fantasy and reality
which she started when she was living in Singapore and witnessed - through her
bird watching binoculars - a man hitting a woman in a neighbouring condominium.
In a strange twist the neighbour then in turn started spying on her! This blend
of strange reality, and headlines grabbed straight from the newspapers, enabled the
bones of a novel to take shape. Snel now aims to turn her novels and short stories
into screenplays. There is already talk of a film of The Expat - Snel said it will undoubtedly be
filmed in Singapore which pleased the crowd!
Canadian author SP Hozy’s literary novel The Scarlett Macaw presents two entwined
mysteries that unfold over two different time periods in Singapore, one in the
present day and the other in the 1920s. The contemporary mystery concerns an
artist named Maris who is shattered by the death of her mentor, gallery owner
Peter Stone. Stone left Maris a trunk of old letters and books by British
author E. Sutcliffe Moresby (based on W. Somerset Maugham). The letters tell of a
tragic love story. Hozy read a passage about a newlywed couple caught in the Botanic Gardens during one of
Singapore’s torrential downpours. Afterwards, as the
couple head home in a rickshaw, they witness an elderly Chinese woman dying in
the street; the earlier carefree moments they spent enjoying the splendour
of the gardens have gone, and the bride realises she and all others are at the
mercy of strangers.
