Fascist Rock: Stories of Rebellion

by Claire Tham

'Tham’s first published collection of short stories. Brilliant, opinionated, and irreverent, Tham demonstrated a capacity to capture the mood and manners of twenty-year-old Singaporeans with given names like Patsy, Chris, Alphonsus, James, Jeanne, and Irwin, who typically inhabit cars, arcades, and condominiums, and who convey sentiments about as deep as a half-smoked cigarette, a pop song, or an evening drive past ghostly grey blocks of flats. The title Fascist Rock is about the only ambiguity in this book. It could refer to a place, to music, or to an attitude, or all three. For the characters in the story, “Baby, You Can Drive My Car’, life is brittle, hedonist, narcissistic, escapist, ‘a fake magazine existence.” The past is dead, and a friend’s death brings merely a futile shrug of the shoulder. Tham’s terse, spare prose surges up out of each story as her characters express their frustration at life on an island “no longer than a peanut”, at official recollections of thousands of years of Chinese history which do not translate to Singapore, and at conformist practices like university initiations. Even a classic Chinese immigrant success story can go sour when in the story, “Homecoming”, a Singaporean university student returns from London to confront the solitary loneliness of a recently-deceased father, who “did nothing but stay in his flat all day, re-reading the papers and waiting for the moment his son would come home. Behind every educational achievement, Tham indicates, there is an enormous private cost. The contrast of generational opportunity in this story is profound.

Older Singaporeans are allowed some, albeit brief, say in Tham’s literary vision. In the story just called “Lee”, it is left to a Chinese Singaporean father to explain to his Americanised, street-smart daughter that any former colony full of comparatively recent immigrants has to try doubly hard to matter and to be respected in a competitive world. However, at least by comparison, a measure of acquiescence is possible, even for restless youth caught in a “milieu of work and pragmatism.” The story called “Pawns” is set in June, 1989. The events of that time in China sent shockwaves throughout the rest of Asia, and indeed the world. “Pawns” vividly shows that the Lion City is more than preferable to a Celestial Middle Kingdom that can silence the cream of its educated younger generation at Tiananmen Square.'

-- Peter Wicks, University of Southern Queensland, The Literary Encyclopedia, 1
September 2007

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[aqilahreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

TW: mention of death, suicide

this is claire tham's debut collection of short stories published in 1990, exploring the theme of rebellion.

i kinda enjoyed this one!! each and every story are just nice; not too good & not too bad either. its beautifully written but there are some parts where i feel theres more meaning/sentiments to it but i think its just me that couldnt quite get into it ((also bless my poor bank of vocabs)) 🤣

would probably look into more of her recent works! feels really great that we still get to read singlit that were published years ago ((even way before i was born!!)) i guess its never too late to appreciate them.

[Amy Baumgarten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given as a gift, this is a book I wouldn’t have chosen for myself. I like the short stories aspect, and since the authors vary throughout the stories, I found some much more enjoyable than others. Overall it was a quick read and I think I’ll definitely try more short story collections in the new year!

[hazel]

jeanne was good but that’s it

[Dynah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a random library pick I chose because of its slim length and nifty cover (newer edition). I basically only liked one story, Pawns, about a guy who was involved (?) in the Tiananmen Square protests and what happens when he flees and tries to seek refuge with family. I liked that it got into trauma his older sister experienced bc of war (? I guess it was war? or other Bad Times) and how that maybe affected her response to him in the present.

When reading short stories I find it easy to get lost/not know what the hell is going on. A lot of these stories did that to me, and I think this was heightened here because I had zero knowledge of the setting and context (most stories are about teens/young adults in Singapore in, I think, the 1980s).