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The Myopic Years
152 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 23, 2025
05.10.2021
what a severely underrated bildungsroman. 100% singaporean and it just captures what being a student in the 2000s is like so well. i felt like i was looking into a time capsule. even if i didn’t attend a girls’ school, i could get it. this book is a piece of amber perfectly frozen in time with just the right balance of humour and bittersweetness. my heart ached a little, just a little, reading the lines of dialogue that reminded me of how it felt to be a teen back then in an era of tamagotchis, DOTA, unspoken tensions, and tentative friendships. as the protagonist progresses from primary to secondary and finally JC, she sheds off old versions of herself and also of others. poignant and deeply affecting!!
23.12.2025
My only reread this year because I remembered reading this back in 2021 and wondering who exactly the author is and where she is now. I still wonder. I hope she's still writing because this book from 2008 is still one of my favourite singlit books and I want to meet the author someday to tell her that. I also want this book to be reprinted again.
The setting is very familiar if you were a student in the 2000s, back when people had/read blogs every evening when they got home, when the boys were obsessed with WOW/DOTA/Runescape, and doing well in your co-curricular activity was extremely important. The characters study for exams, get in trouble with the authorities, and spend a lot of time gossiping about so-and-so, which is typical of teenagers and nostalgic to read about. I'd describe it as slice of life with a subplot of lesbian coming-of-age.
The unnamed narrator spends her secondary school years in a single-gender environment as a member of the basketball club, where she also meets her then-girlfriend. They break up eventually, as expected, and when they meet again five years later as young adults, their conversation is stilted but very telling (if you know, you know). Although their short-lived relationship was a significant and formative experience to the narrator, its details are kept almost respectfully private, even from the reader, and all we (are allowed to) know is how it started and how it ended. The effect is a sense of irreconcilable loss and unresolvedness. They both manage to move on with their lives, just like the rest of their ex-classmates, but there is clearly a lot left unsaid and that is what is most interesting. What I like best about this book is its tacit acknowledgement of the inadequacy of words to represent what they meant to each other, even years after separating, and this language of gaps and oblique references is just so in line with any attempt at accurately representing forbidden queer love.
what a severely underrated bildungsroman. 100% singaporean and it just captures what being a student in the 2000s is like so well. i felt like i was looking into a time capsule. even if i didn’t attend a girls’ school, i could get it. this book is a piece of amber perfectly frozen in time with just the right balance of humour and bittersweetness. my heart ached a little, just a little, reading the lines of dialogue that reminded me of how it felt to be a teen back then in an era of tamagotchis, DOTA, unspoken tensions, and tentative friendships. as the protagonist progresses from primary to secondary and finally JC, she sheds off old versions of herself and also of others. poignant and deeply affecting!!
23.12.2025
My only reread this year because I remembered reading this back in 2021 and wondering who exactly the author is and where she is now. I still wonder. I hope she's still writing because this book from 2008 is still one of my favourite singlit books and I want to meet the author someday to tell her that. I also want this book to be reprinted again.
The setting is very familiar if you were a student in the 2000s, back when people had/read blogs every evening when they got home, when the boys were obsessed with WOW/DOTA/Runescape, and doing well in your co-curricular activity was extremely important. The characters study for exams, get in trouble with the authorities, and spend a lot of time gossiping about so-and-so, which is typical of teenagers and nostalgic to read about. I'd describe it as slice of life with a subplot of lesbian coming-of-age.
The unnamed narrator spends her secondary school years in a single-gender environment as a member of the basketball club, where she also meets her then-girlfriend. They break up eventually, as expected, and when they meet again five years later as young adults, their conversation is stilted but very telling (if you know, you know). Although their short-lived relationship was a significant and formative experience to the narrator, its details are kept almost respectfully private, even from the reader, and all we (are allowed to) know is how it started and how it ended. The effect is a sense of irreconcilable loss and unresolvedness. They both manage to move on with their lives, just like the rest of their ex-classmates, but there is clearly a lot left unsaid and that is what is most interesting. What I like best about this book is its tacit acknowledgement of the inadequacy of words to represent what they meant to each other, even years after separating, and this language of gaps and oblique references is just so in line with any attempt at accurately representing forbidden queer love.
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March 31, 2012My friend wrote this book and though I have yet to read it, I have been tasked with leaving copies in hostels around the world :)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews