Finding Chopin

by Rachel Tey

A mother and son confront the past through fragmented memories.

Nineteen-year-old Finn Chang’s final-year project demands a photographic exploration of memory. As he pieces together fragments of his past, his mother, Emerald, becomes his guide through a labyrinth of recollections—some vivid, others elusive. Their search awakens long-buried truths, drawing them into a tangled history of loss, love and unexpected revelations. What begins as an academic exercise soon becomes a journey neither of them can control.

174 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 17, 2025

About the author

RACHEL TEY is a Singapore-based author of a novel, two children’s books and three short stories. She is a part-time university lecturer, where she teaches writing and communications-based courses. Rachel holds an MA in English (creative writing) from Nanyang Technological University, and obtained her BA in French and Sociology from the National University of Singapore. She is deeply inspired by fictions of memory, which informed her Master's research. Her latest novel, FINDING CHOPIN, was a finalist of the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2025 and a Straits Times Weekly Bestseller (November 29, 2025).

Reviews

[ns510reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this! Rachel Tey’s Finding Chopin is a tender and contemplative examination of time, memory, motherhood, and the stories that are the stuff of us.

Told from the perspectives of widowed mother Emerald Fong and her son Finley Chang Jr, the narrative loops around their present day lives and past recollections, the two embarking on their own ‘Camino’, this non-linear journey down memory lane sparked by Finn’s final year graduation project. It’s a good time to reflect, with all the changes taking place around them; the sudden loss of a much missed husband and father, Emmy’s own prickly relationship with her ailing mother, and Finn enlisting for military service in the coming year. As memories come to the surface, the sum of a life emerges.

So much of our lives are shaped by the ones who first raised us, the worlds they move in colliding with our own, the experiences we internalise reaching far beyond to influence those of the next generations. So much is absorbed without our knowing, so much of what we carry only coming to light with the passage of time. These memories are embodied, unwittingly summoned by a touch, a taste, a scent. The sound of grass cutters, the melody of a remembered song, the feeling of being in a certain place at a certain time; these can whip us right back to a given moment, even as things change, landscapes disappear, and we have ceased to remain the same. They are held by the people who know us best, remaining alive for as long as we remember, bringing us back to who we have become.

As one year ends and another is set to begin, this was the perfect novel to see me through this period of change and reflection. Finely observed and beautifully drawn, it captures glimpses of a changing Singapore, and the fleeting lives of those moving through it. It highlights the slippery nature of time and memory and life itself, everything existing in this temporary moment, past and present and future constantly in flux, our memories and lived experiences so interwoven with the fabric of space and time that there is no separation. We see things not as they were, but as we are. And we are life, we are time, we are place, we are memory. We are the stories we tell ourselves, in the end.

Thank you so much @rapunzelinparis for sending me a copy of your beautiful book, glad and grateful for the time I spent with it! 💚

[CuriousBookReviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Curiosity level: The magic and mess of memory; an emotional scavenger hunt

“Memory’s reconstructions were efficient, Emerald thought, watching her bathroom walls fall away and hearing a familiar waltz firing at the back of her mind.”

Reading that line made me think of memory as a kind of teleportation portal 🌌

Sound and music have always had the ability to yank us between timelines. There’s the jarringness of the present; there’s the soft, blissful blur of a happier past. For some, memory is sharper than shadows, nipping constantly at their heels. For me, memory is a soft silhouette, very blurred at the edges, susceptible to details shifting 🌬️😶‍🌫️

In Finding Chopin, Emerald moves through a world where the past keeps bleeding into the present. She trails a familiar waltz, little memory crumbs popping up along the way and nudging her from one old place to another. The narrative isn’t just about memory; it’s about how we navigate the pieces of ourselves that resurface unexpectedly, and how we can heal/confront/poke around, softly re-shaping them. There is also a familiar whimsy here, reminiscent of the gentle, tender quality in Rachel’s Tea in Pajamas 🫖

It also made me reflect on my own relationship with memory and the triggers that unlock it: smells, sounds, sights. A blissful time in KL with my siblings; the horror of an almost-drowning, when the rush of water still “swooshes” in my mind. That sensation—the sudden “transportation”—is indeed “efficient”. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with memory, never able to recall details with the meticulous clarity my science-and-math friends seem to possess. I dream; I merge; I mix reality with imagination 💭

“… but later on the way home, when I realise I’d remembered it wrongly, I started trusting my memory a little less.”
(I enjoyed many of her quotes)

If you enjoy stories that are dreamy, reflective, and quietly aching: books that feel like stepping into someone’s half-remembered dream… you’ll likely find this one enchanting!

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the get-go, reading Finding Chopin was an unmistakably SingLit experience. With a unique voice, Rachel Tey captures the essence of exchanges between Singaporeans so authentically, that reading the book is like drinking a comforting cup of Teh C at one’s favourite kopitiam.

The relationships portrayed are raw and easily resonate. The difficult dance of a trying mother-daughter relationship over the decades, the all too-familiar screechiness of an over-bearing office colleague and the pain of betrayal by one’s first love - all developed and delivered well in this novel which spans across continents and time.

I deeply appreciated the refreshing inclusion of faith in this book, for once not ridiculed or portrayed as only hypocritical. I have often wished that such everyday faith which is so much a part of many Singaporeans’ lives would find its way into a SingLit book, so that people of faith, young and old, can feel seen as well.

The book’s theme of memory and loss is effectively interwoven into flashbacks as events and stories unfurl chapter by chapter. Being of the same generation as the author, I could identify with so many blasts from the past, especially the Metro jingle (I had a much beloved pink-and-white Metro Christmas bear!) and now-defunct dining institutions like Ponderosa.

Thanks @rapunzelinparis for the autographed copy of your lovely book.

[Khesia Kalistyatika · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the first pages, I was hooked by the contrast reality in Climate Change Studies scene depicted skillfully by Rachel. Then I enjoyed the story till the end for the topic is relevant to all of us (Who has never experienced deja vu?)

The book is about memorabilia’s power to bring people revisiting olden days and that journey helped people to know who they are and their family history. It is a hopeful story for I reflect from the main character that we can choose healing over the memories we had in the past. Decision is ours. Rachel is really a sharp observant.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving and poignant exploration of memory and its undercurrent, time. Time here is like a place with many doors, most open. Grief and love and 'what if' the leviathans that float through them. Yet for all the struggle this novel portrays in its explorations of lost time, my favorite line: "Don't forget bliss" (p.205), is surely a way forward even if it is also backward. Holding on to the good things in memory is as important as those other things memory does.

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much that I slowed down - as I didn’t want to part with the characters. Each of them reminded me of people I know, which makes it all feel so relatable. It’s made me reflect on my own memories and passage through time, through its beautiful writing which presented the story and characters in such a vivid manner. I highly recommend it.

[Tan Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

A melancholic introspective reflection on the concepts of identity, familial relationships and community, with a cast of highly relatabe characters and an environment full of easter eggs that can in turn stir up the emotions in a fellow Singaporean reader, making this a heartwarming conclusion to my reading journey for this year,

[Xxx · Rating 5 out of 5]

very well-written and meaningful book