Ricky Star

Singapore Classics

by Lim Thean Soo

First published in 1978 by Pan Pacific Book Distributors, Ricky Star is about a man who strives for career and financial success at the expense of everyone else around him, including even his wife and daughter. At first successful in his endeavour to climb a series of corporate ladders and becoming very rich, Ricky is, in the end, forced to reckon with his past misdeeds and indiscretions.

322 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Lim Thean Soo was a civil servant most of his life and was Comptroller of Customs in Singapore. He has published novels, books of short stories and a volume of poems. He describes his first novel Southward Lies the Fortress (1971) as a "history in novel form" about the Japanese seige and eventual conquest of Singapore. The poems are collected in The Liberation of Lily and Other Poems. Of his many short stories, "The Expatriate" was published in ONE: The Anthology (2012) edited by Robert Yeo.

Reviews

[Debx Ng · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as I would love to support local literature, this book has not been able to survive past the times. Written perhaps in the 1970s or 1980s a lot of the terms of expression and ideology are outdated and difficult to relate to. Besides that the main character Ricky Star is a selfish, chauvinistic man and his eventual descent is neither inspiring nor suspenseful but a no-brainer. If you want a glimpse into a slice of Singapore as it could have been in the past, I'd still rather recommend Christine Suchen Lim.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, as it opened with an interesting and relatable cast of characters, whose lives and relationships were depicted in wonderful detail. The author’s simple style of writing ensured that an otherwise complex plot was easy enough to follow. However, this writing eventually became more descriptive than narrative. His sentences turned repetitive and tedious to read. New characters were carelessly introduced near the end, diminishing the impact they could have made had they been weaved in from the start.

In the end, this is a book that failed to live up to its rich portrayal of characters in dubious circumstances. It had been set up as a promising story of the downfall of Ricky Star, but unfortunately became what seemed to be the work of an author who had gotten bored of that same protagonist. Otherwise, it could have been a great social commentary for the issues of that period, and how parallels can be drawn between Ricky and other individuals even in current society.

Worse still, this edition of the book had multiple spelling and grammatical errors. Truly a disappointing read.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities except it actually precedes it by a decade. Ricky Star depicts a world of easy material accumulation and the moral vacuum left behind in such a society.