Rosie is the editor of Asian Books Blog. Her previous novels are How to Change Your Life, Holding the Baby and Olivia & Sophia - a re-telling of the life of Tom Raffles, the founder of Singapore, through the fictional diaries of his first wife, Olivia, who died young, and his second wife, Sophia, who outlived him.
Circumstance is set in the jungles of colonial Malaya in the 1920s. It explores what happens when an adoring young bride is met on the doorstep of her new home by her husband's former mistress.
It is 1924 and the British rule Malaya. Frank is a colonial administrator in a remote district deep in the jungle. Rose is the innocent young bride he’s just brought out from England. Nony is the native mistress he’d previously abandoned, along with their four children.
When Rose arrives in Malaya, she knows nothing of her new husband’s past. But how long can she remain ignorant? Frank, Rose and Nony soon become entangled in vines of secrecy and lying, they are snagged by thorns of bribery and blackmail, and caught in sticky webs of bluff and counter-bluff. Something must give between them: but what?
Circumstance explores how secrets kept are more destructive than secrets told. It asks a whole range of questions about how what we believe, what we know, and what we think we know are all influenced by the societies in which we live. It vividly evokes the humid jungle, where ghosts mingle with the living, and magic is an accepted part of daily life.
Details: Circumstance is published by Monsoon Books, in paperback, priced in local currencies. The eBook is coming soon.
