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It Never Rains on National Day
Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2016 for English Fiction
A woman fleeing her previous existence meets a fellow Singaporean on an overnight train in Norway. A foreign worker is decapitated in an HDB building site accident. A Singaporean wife must negotiate Beijing as her British husband awaits a heart transplant. And in different corners of the world, Singaporeans and exiles mark National Day in their own ways.
Jeremy Tiang’s debut collection weaves together the lives of its characters across the world—from Switzerland, Norway, Germany, China, Canada, Thailand, New York City and back to Singapore. These wry, unsettling stories ask how we decide where we belong, and what happens to those who don’t.
A woman fleeing her previous existence meets a fellow Singaporean on an overnight train in Norway. A foreign worker is decapitated in an HDB building site accident. A Singaporean wife must negotiate Beijing as her British husband awaits a heart transplant. And in different corners of the world, Singaporeans and exiles mark National Day in their own ways.
Jeremy Tiang’s debut collection weaves together the lives of its characters across the world—from Switzerland, Norway, Germany, China, Canada, Thailand, New York City and back to Singapore. These wry, unsettling stories ask how we decide where we belong, and what happens to those who don’t.
220 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2015
16 people are currently reading
476 people want to read
About the author
Jeremy Tiang
59 books99 followersJeremy Tiang is the author of State of Emergency (2017, finalist for the 2016 Epigram Books Fiction Prize) and It Never Rains on National Day (2015, shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize). He won the Golden Point Award for Fiction in 2009 for his story "Trondheim". He also writes and translates plays, including A Dream of Red Pavilions, The Last Days of Limehouse, A Son Soon by Xu Nuo, and Floating Bones by Quah Sy Ren and Han Lao Da. Tiang has translated more than ten books from the Chinese—including novels by Chan Ho-Kei, Zhang Yueran, Yeng Pway Ngon and Su Wei-chen—and has received an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and a People’s Literature Award Mao-Tai Cup. He currently lives in Brooklyn.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
July 29, 2022
I think this book is likable.
Initially, i was rather bored + disappointed by the cookie-cutter emo themes, of Civil Servants blabbing on about how they feel Alienated from Singapore.
Consider, an almost complete set:
- Singaporean Girl who marries an Angmo and feels Alienated and Between Worlds
- Arts Girl who feels sad in Trondheim, and sleeps with an angmoh to Feel Alive Again
- Engineer Civil Servant who is a Government Scholar, who cannot understand Arts Girl
- MOE Teacher, wandering Germany, fluent in German, who meets angmo couple (in this instance, it's not relevant what is the specific nationality of this couple, because their function [as often is the case] is a Foil to Singaporean Angst).
- Singaporean Chinese in a Foreign, Unfamiliar Land, struggling with their Mandarin
- Angmo disgusted by NDP, cos military, and parade, and guns. Shudder.
[OF COURSE the angmo has to be disgusted right!!! The layers of hypocrisy multiply once you think a little closer on the character, and the characterisation.
For instance, consider the sheer scale of violence of the British Empire and its military at its height; heck even the TRADITION of these parades derives in part from the pomp and ceremony of the durbars organised by British Raj. Please remember your own chequered history before riding down on us with your high horse, Mr Democratic-Angmo-Man.
For instance, also consider the fact that a British character has to be written up like that too, possibly (but not definitely) as a proxy for the writer's thoughts - how crude, how simplistic, this caricature of the angM0lang from Farawayland]
- A m B i G u I T y
- mopey middle-class variations on these themes
But this collection wasn't unreadable nor insufferable, as some pieces of Singapore writing about 'Singaporeans' (in truth only a very thin strata of middle-class, English-readers, often with civil service jobs, often with the same Sadnesses and Melancholies, often who went to NUS and did Exchange in some angmohland and Discovered Racism, Confusion, and The Feeling of Being Untethered) can be.
For all its generic appeals, I liked that the snippets of these whiny, privileged characters with their Alienation Problems were later set against a story about migrant workers on their day off to St John's Island ("National Day"). Those were a set of perspectives i haven't really yet been exposed to yet (as a whiny, middle-class English reader myself). You don't often find such flashes in books of this species, so credit to Tiang for this effort.
There's also an early story about a Writer ("Tick"), stuck in a creative block, that sat powerfully on its own, without need to reference Singapore, or Singaporeanness. The ending was so swift, so masterfully delivered, that i only sat with a quiet "wow" for a moment.
I think it's clear that Tiang can be a very good writer - i came to this book via a short story in one of the Balik Kampungs, though i've yet to read State of Emergency. I'm a little disappointed at many of the privileged, whiny-character stories because frankly, like ticks, there is too much of that kind of thing in our literaryscape liao, and those stories don't really add new insights to what already exists.
But generally, the writing is very readable. Worth a relaxed graze if you happen to be:
- (let's just point to the Emperor's stale elephant in the room la) CHINESE?? (okay la, no need to play race so much, see next category, because this is what inequality looks like)
- upper/middle-class + went to NUS/NTU/SMU
- like to be seen reading #Singlit (bought preferably from BooksActually because #supportlocal, preferably with a fashionable minimalist cover)
- harbour some generic feelings of Alienation about The Singapore Government and its Education System, which Makes Us Robots
- Are a civil servant/PSC Scholar/ Scholar of some variation
- like to indulge occasionally in some moping and angsting about how Atomised We Have Become as a Nation... but would probably vote PAP in the end, anyway
Edit: initially put 4-stars but after letting it sit a while i think this book rates more as a 3 or 3.5-star.
Initially, i was rather bored + disappointed by the cookie-cutter emo themes, of Civil Servants blabbing on about how they feel Alienated from Singapore.
Consider, an almost complete set:
- Singaporean Girl who marries an Angmo and feels Alienated and Between Worlds
- Arts Girl who feels sad in Trondheim, and sleeps with an angmoh to Feel Alive Again
- Engineer Civil Servant who is a Government Scholar, who cannot understand Arts Girl
- MOE Teacher, wandering Germany, fluent in German, who meets angmo couple (in this instance, it's not relevant what is the specific nationality of this couple, because their function [as often is the case] is a Foil to Singaporean Angst).
- Singaporean Chinese in a Foreign, Unfamiliar Land, struggling with their Mandarin
- Angmo disgusted by NDP, cos military, and parade, and guns. Shudder.
[OF COURSE the angmo has to be disgusted right!!! The layers of hypocrisy multiply once you think a little closer on the character, and the characterisation.
For instance, consider the sheer scale of violence of the British Empire and its military at its height; heck even the TRADITION of these parades derives in part from the pomp and ceremony of the durbars organised by British Raj. Please remember your own chequered history before riding down on us with your high horse, Mr Democratic-Angmo-Man.
For instance, also consider the fact that a British character has to be written up like that too, possibly (but not definitely) as a proxy for the writer's thoughts - how crude, how simplistic, this caricature of the angM0lang from Farawayland]
- A m B i G u I T y
- mopey middle-class variations on these themes
But this collection wasn't unreadable nor insufferable, as some pieces of Singapore writing about 'Singaporeans' (in truth only a very thin strata of middle-class, English-readers, often with civil service jobs, often with the same Sadnesses and Melancholies, often who went to NUS and did Exchange in some angmohland and Discovered Racism, Confusion, and The Feeling of Being Untethered) can be.
For all its generic appeals, I liked that the snippets of these whiny, privileged characters with their Alienation Problems were later set against a story about migrant workers on their day off to St John's Island ("National Day"). Those were a set of perspectives i haven't really yet been exposed to yet (as a whiny, middle-class English reader myself). You don't often find such flashes in books of this species, so credit to Tiang for this effort.
There's also an early story about a Writer ("Tick"), stuck in a creative block, that sat powerfully on its own, without need to reference Singapore, or Singaporeanness. The ending was so swift, so masterfully delivered, that i only sat with a quiet "wow" for a moment.
I think it's clear that Tiang can be a very good writer - i came to this book via a short story in one of the Balik Kampungs, though i've yet to read State of Emergency. I'm a little disappointed at many of the privileged, whiny-character stories because frankly, like ticks, there is too much of that kind of thing in our literaryscape liao, and those stories don't really add new insights to what already exists.
But generally, the writing is very readable. Worth a relaxed graze if you happen to be:
- (let's just point to the Emperor's stale elephant in the room la) CHINESE?? (okay la, no need to play race so much, see next category, because this is what inequality looks like)
- upper/middle-class + went to NUS/NTU/SMU
- like to be seen reading #Singlit (bought preferably from BooksActually because #supportlocal, preferably with a fashionable minimalist cover)
- harbour some generic feelings of Alienation about The Singapore Government and its Education System, which Makes Us Robots
- Are a civil servant/PSC Scholar/ Scholar of some variation
- like to indulge occasionally in some moping and angsting about how Atomised We Have Become as a Nation... but would probably vote PAP in the end, anyway
Edit: initially put 4-stars but after letting it sit a while i think this book rates more as a 3 or 3.5-star.
June 13, 2017
jeremy tiang attempts to write from a 'range' of perspectives & voices, but locating characters in various cities across the world (bangkok, china, new york, germany) etc. does not make them different or diverse. the stories came across as hollow, lacking intimacy or heart.
the worst kind of characters feature in this book: ones utterly unaware of their privilege. in turn it came across as though the author was not aware of that/the way his own privilege informs his characters. the singaporeans here are the creamy layer skimmed off the top of society: well-off, well-educated, well-traveled. their reflections on singapore & what it means to be a singaporean come from the privilege of having lived elsewhere. if i were to give him the benefit of the doubt and concede that that might have been intentional, that he wanted to portray them that way as a form of criticism of singaporean mindset/society, that intentionality didn't come across.
finally, close to a third of the stories (maybe even half) were written from the perspective of females. he failed to effectively inhabit their voice, it read like "this is what i think a woman would think if she were in this position". i would not recommend.
the worst kind of characters feature in this book: ones utterly unaware of their privilege. in turn it came across as though the author was not aware of that/the way his own privilege informs his characters. the singaporeans here are the creamy layer skimmed off the top of society: well-off, well-educated, well-traveled. their reflections on singapore & what it means to be a singaporean come from the privilege of having lived elsewhere. if i were to give him the benefit of the doubt and concede that that might have been intentional, that he wanted to portray them that way as a form of criticism of singaporean mindset/society, that intentionality didn't come across.
finally, close to a third of the stories (maybe even half) were written from the perspective of females. he failed to effectively inhabit their voice, it read like "this is what i think a woman would think if she were in this position". i would not recommend.
November 11, 2015
Crisp, clear and elegant writing, on the themes of escape, travel, interracial relationships, and most importantly, boundaries set by society and oneself.
Indeed, the author wanted to use the German word for “fear of crossing boundaries” as the title of his book. Three cheers for the publisher who prevented this from happening, as it surely would have turned off many potential readers/buyers. It would have been a shame, since this book is a gem which has persuaded me to integrate more Asian literature in my Western-centric diet.
Most stories unfold at night, and many show characters dreaming or drifting off to sleep, as if they can only deal with their true emotions far from the harsh, bright daylight. Boundaries, like prison, are best escaped in the thick of the night.
Here are my description of the 11 stories and some accompanying thoughts:
Sophia’s Honeymoon
Sophia and her born-rich and ultimately-rather-lousy British husband honeymoon in Europe. They go to the opera. Feeling out of her element she escapes in the middle of the performance and gets lost in Zurich before being found by her husband, who’d rather not dwell on the reasons of her escape.
• Singaporean focus on food: Expensive chocolates, Sprungli macarons, thick veal stew, fries and McEmmenthaler. Feel hungry already?
• Reminded me of Laura van den Berg’s Isle of Youth collection, which also opens with a honeymoon-gone-wrong story told from the woman’s POV and showing her on a brief solo escape from a marriage that seems sure to fail.
• Couldn’t shake a feeling that the story was a cautionary tale for Singaporean women who think Western husbands are better. But I think I was primed by the last sentence of the book backcover: “These unsettling stories ask how we decide where we belong, and what happens to those who don’t.” (emphasis mine)
Trondheim
On a train in Norway, a man gets wind that a fellow Singaporean has no ticket and pays for her. As they get acquainted, tension mounts as the man represents Singapore conservative values, and she’s a teacher who’s just decided to defect her bond.
• Taken literally, this story sounds like another cautionary tale against interracial relationships (during her travels, the woman has slept with a foreign man and may be in deep trouble), but once I learned that the author, just like the woman, used to be teacher, I ended up thinking this story is really lashing out against society’s conformism and overly pragmatist attitudes, exemplified by the male engineer character.
Tick
An aspiring novelist rents a cabin in the wood, hoping it will cure his procrastination. Of course, he fails, and all sorts of calamities pile up in his life over the course of his stay.
• First story where the characters aren’t explicitly Singaporean.
• Delightful humour and fast-paced plot.
• For personal reasons, this story spoke to me on various levels. Will re-read this one for sure.
Schwellenangst
On a trip to Germany, a Singaporean female teacher wanders at night, finds a rave and befriends two strangers she meets there. They leave together, talk and fall asleep in the park.
• Story with the most literary tone.
• About a Singaporean woman doing something out-of-the-norm (in this case, sleeping out in the open, as opposed to returning to the relative safety of her hostel) and wanting to hide it from her students and fellow teachers, an expression of how tight Singapore societal boundaries can be. (In other societies, such an experience would give the woman bragging rights.)
• Impressive display of the author’s power of description. I had never heard of Prora, the Hitler-era resort where the story takes place, but when I looked up pictures after reading the story, it was exactly as I had imagined it based on his description.
Sophia’s Aunt
Sophia’s British husband is not so cocky now since he’s hospitalised in Beijing, awaiting a heart transplant thanks to the intercession of Sophia’s aunt, able to pull the necessary strings.
• Interesting structure as the author manages two POVs in the course of a short story.
• Poignant emotions ringing extremely true all the while remaining unexpected. One of the best stories in the collection.
• Bonus: Depicts the oft-awkward relationship between Singapore and China, and also functions as a political critique (won’t say more to avoid spoiler).
Toronto
Having escaped her Singaporean life, a teacher follows Canadian friends participating in a festive march. They all get drunk and she ends up sleeping with a foreigner who disappears by morning.
• Okay, maybe the author really wanted to caution Singaporean women against relationships with foreign men. These don’t tend to end up well, lol.
• The narrator seems to live inside her head a lot. She attends the parade, but it feels like she’s floating above the scene throughout, observing herself.
• Exemplary “show, don’t tell,” but a little telling might have been good, if only to let readers know why she’s escaping her old life.
Harmonious Residences
Dealing with love problems and a potential loss of face, a HDB manager needs to handle the crazed widow of a Chinese worker who’s died a gruesome death on the building site of a new development.
• Amazing first line/hook: “They found his decapitated body on the forty-first floor.”
• This story suffers a bit due to having an unlikable, terribly self-centred narrator.
• I suspect this is another story that can’t be read literally and, just like in the Trondheim story, the person who’s described as crazy is actually the sanest one (sane in the sense of retaining a sense of right and wrong, and the ability to revolt). IMHO, this is a story about the treatment of foreign workers, cold-hearted bureaucracy and what can happen when only “face” counts.
[Sorry if I appear a bit thick sometimes. My excuse is that I've watched too many Channel 8 primetime dramas sponsored by various ministries and have thus stopped to expect subtlety, lol. My bad, really.]
To be continued.
Indeed, the author wanted to use the German word for “fear of crossing boundaries” as the title of his book. Three cheers for the publisher who prevented this from happening, as it surely would have turned off many potential readers/buyers. It would have been a shame, since this book is a gem which has persuaded me to integrate more Asian literature in my Western-centric diet.
Most stories unfold at night, and many show characters dreaming or drifting off to sleep, as if they can only deal with their true emotions far from the harsh, bright daylight. Boundaries, like prison, are best escaped in the thick of the night.
Here are my description of the 11 stories and some accompanying thoughts:
Sophia’s Honeymoon
Sophia and her born-rich and ultimately-rather-lousy British husband honeymoon in Europe. They go to the opera. Feeling out of her element she escapes in the middle of the performance and gets lost in Zurich before being found by her husband, who’d rather not dwell on the reasons of her escape.
• Singaporean focus on food: Expensive chocolates, Sprungli macarons, thick veal stew, fries and McEmmenthaler. Feel hungry already?
• Reminded me of Laura van den Berg’s Isle of Youth collection, which also opens with a honeymoon-gone-wrong story told from the woman’s POV and showing her on a brief solo escape from a marriage that seems sure to fail.
• Couldn’t shake a feeling that the story was a cautionary tale for Singaporean women who think Western husbands are better. But I think I was primed by the last sentence of the book backcover: “These unsettling stories ask how we decide where we belong, and what happens to those who don’t.” (emphasis mine)
Trondheim
On a train in Norway, a man gets wind that a fellow Singaporean has no ticket and pays for her. As they get acquainted, tension mounts as the man represents Singapore conservative values, and she’s a teacher who’s just decided to defect her bond.
• Taken literally, this story sounds like another cautionary tale against interracial relationships (during her travels, the woman has slept with a foreign man and may be in deep trouble), but once I learned that the author, just like the woman, used to be teacher, I ended up thinking this story is really lashing out against society’s conformism and overly pragmatist attitudes, exemplified by the male engineer character.
Tick
An aspiring novelist rents a cabin in the wood, hoping it will cure his procrastination. Of course, he fails, and all sorts of calamities pile up in his life over the course of his stay.
• First story where the characters aren’t explicitly Singaporean.
• Delightful humour and fast-paced plot.
• For personal reasons, this story spoke to me on various levels. Will re-read this one for sure.
Schwellenangst
On a trip to Germany, a Singaporean female teacher wanders at night, finds a rave and befriends two strangers she meets there. They leave together, talk and fall asleep in the park.
• Story with the most literary tone.
• About a Singaporean woman doing something out-of-the-norm (in this case, sleeping out in the open, as opposed to returning to the relative safety of her hostel) and wanting to hide it from her students and fellow teachers, an expression of how tight Singapore societal boundaries can be. (In other societies, such an experience would give the woman bragging rights.)
• Impressive display of the author’s power of description. I had never heard of Prora, the Hitler-era resort where the story takes place, but when I looked up pictures after reading the story, it was exactly as I had imagined it based on his description.
Sophia’s Aunt
Sophia’s British husband is not so cocky now since he’s hospitalised in Beijing, awaiting a heart transplant thanks to the intercession of Sophia’s aunt, able to pull the necessary strings.
• Interesting structure as the author manages two POVs in the course of a short story.
• Poignant emotions ringing extremely true all the while remaining unexpected. One of the best stories in the collection.
• Bonus: Depicts the oft-awkward relationship between Singapore and China, and also functions as a political critique (won’t say more to avoid spoiler).
Toronto
Having escaped her Singaporean life, a teacher follows Canadian friends participating in a festive march. They all get drunk and she ends up sleeping with a foreigner who disappears by morning.
• Okay, maybe the author really wanted to caution Singaporean women against relationships with foreign men. These don’t tend to end up well, lol.
• The narrator seems to live inside her head a lot. She attends the parade, but it feels like she’s floating above the scene throughout, observing herself.
• Exemplary “show, don’t tell,” but a little telling might have been good, if only to let readers know why she’s escaping her old life.
Harmonious Residences
Dealing with love problems and a potential loss of face, a HDB manager needs to handle the crazed widow of a Chinese worker who’s died a gruesome death on the building site of a new development.
• Amazing first line/hook: “They found his decapitated body on the forty-first floor.”
• This story suffers a bit due to having an unlikable, terribly self-centred narrator.
• I suspect this is another story that can’t be read literally and, just like in the Trondheim story, the person who’s described as crazy is actually the sanest one (sane in the sense of retaining a sense of right and wrong, and the ability to revolt). IMHO, this is a story about the treatment of foreign workers, cold-hearted bureaucracy and what can happen when only “face” counts.
[Sorry if I appear a bit thick sometimes. My excuse is that I've watched too many Channel 8 primetime dramas sponsored by various ministries and have thus stopped to expect subtlety, lol. My bad, really.]
To be continued.
January 10, 2016
Superb. A riveting set of interconnected stories, mostly but not only about life in Singapore and beyond it, told with precision, genuineness and feeling. Tiang has the short story form down pat - he sucks you in with never-before-told plotlines, and keeps you there with style, substance and, perhaps the hardest to do well - humour. These stories were such fun, and so satisfying, to read. The first two were the weakest in terms of plot, but all are packed with beautifully written off-kilter experiences and canny micro-insights into topics many of us have thought about but perhaps been unable to articulate so delicately. My favourite was the only previously-unpublished story - Tick, whose comic-realist description of writers bloc left me literally LOL-ing at every juncture.
Surely this marks the entrance of a wonderful new voice into the sphere of SingLit. Must read.
[Caveat: I know Jeremy personally, and like him. Make what you will of how this has affected the bias of this review. I myself prefer to see it the other way - i'm now incredibly honoured to be friends with someone whose skills as not just a translator but also a writer are so formidable.]
Surely this marks the entrance of a wonderful new voice into the sphere of SingLit. Must read.
[Caveat: I know Jeremy personally, and like him. Make what you will of how this has affected the bias of this review. I myself prefer to see it the other way - i'm now incredibly honoured to be friends with someone whose skills as not just a translator but also a writer are so formidable.]
February 13, 2021
A light and breezy collection that was pretty fun to read.
Initially thought that it was going to be a collection centred in true-blue Singaporean contexts (based off the title and cover art) but was quite surprised to find out that majority of the stories did the opposite—exploring the diaspora of Singaporeans peppered around the globe but not in their homeland. The presence of recurring characters across the stories was a pretty nice touch as well.
Initially thought that it was going to be a collection centred in true-blue Singaporean contexts (based off the title and cover art) but was quite surprised to find out that majority of the stories did the opposite—exploring the diaspora of Singaporeans peppered around the globe but not in their homeland. The presence of recurring characters across the stories was a pretty nice touch as well.
December 27, 2021
Solid debut collection, with many of the short stories featuring the same characters. The comment's been made a couple of times that it sounds like there's a novel in there somewhere struggling to get out - while I do like the conceit in a short story collection, I definitely felt that part of the reason many people seized on "It could be a novel!" is that many of the stories don't turn on their own discrete axis- they're plotless, they're psychological, introverted little character sketches.
Which is all to the well and good. Tiang's goal is arguably to examine aimlessness, identities suspended in the act of motion. It's just that after a while I found these dissatisfactions frustrating to read. For the same reason, I enjoyed the stories featuring Sophia and her husband Nicholas, particularly the first and last of the collection. Sharp, satirical character sketches that feel like Tiang isn't afraid to caricature instead of psychologise. For this reason they were my favourite in an otherwise highly competent collection that sometimes felt rather adrift.
Which is all to the well and good. Tiang's goal is arguably to examine aimlessness, identities suspended in the act of motion. It's just that after a while I found these dissatisfactions frustrating to read. For the same reason, I enjoyed the stories featuring Sophia and her husband Nicholas, particularly the first and last of the collection. Sharp, satirical character sketches that feel like Tiang isn't afraid to caricature instead of psychologise. For this reason they were my favourite in an otherwise highly competent collection that sometimes felt rather adrift.
November 6, 2023
bro definitely grew up upper middle class went to ri hwach or acs studied overseas and if he wasn't a govt scholar he definitely had a bunch of friends who were
August 25, 2023
top ten books to reread while the parade is playing on tv
September 8, 2019
National Art Council has helped propel another singapore author into the global scene by withdrawing funding ! His first novel the state of emergency , make him globally known because NAC withdrew the funding due to the sensitive nature of the work . Seriously ? Anyway thanks to them , more people are aware of the stories during the emergency and the leftists fight in singapore .
I can’t think of better way to help Singaporean be more aware of various version of history. Maybe some executives in NAC really hoped for that and purposely withdrew the funding to create uproar
Anyway not much can be found easily about the author , other than he is of Sri Lankan and malaysia Chinese heritage and went to Chinese high.
I did not find the book too interesting as the stories seems to be some holiday short stories where he make use of the places he been to and write a story using that as background.
The title is what attracted me, even till today some believe that it never rains on national day because the government did something about it. Did they?
However , the stories seems to have too many characters who are escaping from singapore , feeling too trapped and stifling of the good lives they lead. Scholars who regret signing up , girls who just want to get away from singapore , following guys whom they just met along the way to their apartment ( although it turn out quite harmless)
He wrote a lot about Singaporean who are abroad or who have foreign partners , I can feel his deep sense of patriotism but yet the rebellious attitude towards the state of politics and system.
Not surprising if he lives abroad and he probably has met many scholars , many upper middle class Singaporean who love and hate singapore . He is one of them
Again, well done NAC for withdrawing the funding . Please do that more so we get more internationally acclaimed authors. The global media loves those books which NAC disapprove.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 8, 2021
the misogyny early on just makes it difficult to see the somewhat more robust stories (esp the ones attempting to speak for the marginalised foreign worker community) towards the end in a better light. the context aspires towards the international but i guess Murakami Syndrome hit because the men all seem to be one type while the women another. in fact, the women all seem to be caricaturised vessels, their suffering and internal monologues superficially relatable but ultimately symbolic with no true empathy. i get it, i really do, but as the kids say these days: this ain’t it chief. given how strongly marketed this book was i had much higher expectations. i personally cannot recall any other singlit novel that left such a bad taste in my mouth.
February 22, 2026
If this is the Singlit of 2015, then this is too middle-class mopey and too privileged ahahahahaha what the hell of those sensibilities of these Peranakans (not even, maybe they are more Singaporean-chinese, rather than OGs). The stories I liked about this collection is the insertion of Calvin as a character, a government scholar who turned to be an engineer and faced a labor case / crisis / accident on his site project. This is the same guy who travelled in Trondheim, and met a teacher who went LOA and tried to be a hipster educator, swiping away the Mastercard of her parents, while traversing Europe and America and Canada. Oh, the sheer privilege of that powerful red passport I need to marry someone like Calvin and be apolitical and torn and whiney about my diasporic identity while in the end, years down the lane, ended up marrying an officer from the National Security.
I kind of admire Jeremy's attempt in collating these short stories released from different publications, reworked some of the characters to be able to tie them in the end, but the write-up was too homogenous, if I may say. The prevailing theme of alienation and identification and its contrast to the measured celebration of August 9th seems to be too saturated to make it as a collection, but hey, at least he started collecting and writing. And I saw his progress in writing from these very middle-class aesthetic to the sensibilities achieved through his novel, State of Emergency.
I hope to meet him in person and talk to him about his writing process, his sentiments of being uprooted from his country, and his semblance of alienation as a NYC citizen / resident.
I kind of admire Jeremy's attempt in collating these short stories released from different publications, reworked some of the characters to be able to tie them in the end, but the write-up was too homogenous, if I may say. The prevailing theme of alienation and identification and its contrast to the measured celebration of August 9th seems to be too saturated to make it as a collection, but hey, at least he started collecting and writing. And I saw his progress in writing from these very middle-class aesthetic to the sensibilities achieved through his novel, State of Emergency.
I hope to meet him in person and talk to him about his writing process, his sentiments of being uprooted from his country, and his semblance of alienation as a NYC citizen / resident.
May 16, 2021
It feels like SingLit is always harping on the same themes: belonging, displacement, identity etc but somehow this collection brings something new to the table: a type of genuine ambivalence. I didn’t feel it was criticising patriotism but neither was it glorifying the experience of living abroad. Someone once wrote (Ruby on Substack?) that Tiang’s collection is an oddly specific portrayal of the middle class Singaporean experience, and I find this to be so accurate as to be discomfiting.
But anyway! I don’t know, I’m drawn to this book, its subtle themes and commentary on what it feels to not belong or struggle with the dissonance of belonging and yet not identifying.
But anyway! I don’t know, I’m drawn to this book, its subtle themes and commentary on what it feels to not belong or struggle with the dissonance of belonging and yet not identifying.
October 9, 2021
one of the better anthologies i've read in a while. fascinatingly Singaporean, but probably not deliberately. feels like the kinda book you'd recommend to someone who's just even starting to consider not voting for the PAP and two weeks later they've become a Singaporean Liberal. story ideas were pretty interesting though.
January 23, 2023
I do find it sad this'll be my last non-work book for a while but there's always next time to read the other stuff on my list.
Anyway... instead of a thoughtful, organised analysis you're hereby treated to more inglorious rambling from a literarily uninitiated mind
Overall
- Exploring Singaporeans but on holiday instead of on the island // through the other instead of themselves
- Very interesting and relatable stories tbh + the characters are all quite plausible
- The German references were a plus
- I did find the way loose ends were tied at the end somewhat wholesome, maybe for all the criticisms about things here there’s a certain niceness and charm after all. If you accept a more twisted way of looking at things, even the endings of questionable optimism can be granted some generosity of interpretation and taken to be warm in a certain way
Sophia’s Honeymoon
- Their r/s dynamic seems a bit off is Sophia supposed to be Nicholas’ trophy wife or something
- Nicholas reminds me of the old kind of finbro before the epicentre of global financial misconduct shifted to NY
- Ich mag auf Hochdeutsch spreche auch. Ich denke aber Schweizerdeutsch > Hochdeutsch
- I suspect the author took German 3rd lang
- Too early to actually comment on the story I feel since Sophia and <> appears multiple times more on the ToC
Trondheim
- Narrator sounds like a self-righteous RI 90RP PCME kid from a UG who went OCS during NS or smth
- Tbf ICL is a pretty good first guess for PSC Eng
- “She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn’t heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes.” 💀
- “That’s why I seldom go to the theatre. So depressing. Why not cheer up a bit? I prefer comedies. // Again, she looked at me like I was an idiot, as if she was tired of explaining things to me. I suddenly felt very angry. Of course she knew more about plays than I did; she was a girl, and a literature teacher. If we were talking about torques and pressure gradients then she would be the one to look stupid.” 💀
- “I nodded, and didn’t bother to reply. I had met a lot of girls like her. The pretty ones in the arts stream who giggled and whispered to each other during their Maths lectures, if they went to Maths lectures. In their spare time, they read a lot of Sylvia Plath and wrote indifferent poetry for the school magazine. Knowing where to pigeonhole her comforted but also puzzled me” 💀
- “I felt like I must be gaining status in her eyes; she sounded like she was really interested in me.” 💀
- “I could tell that she was being controversial, but I’ve met a lot of people like her, especially amongst overseas scholars. Some people spend a few years living outside Singapore and then think that gives them the right to criticise everything. I’ve seen them talking and laughing during the national anthem, making fun of the National Day Parade. Normally I try to avoid these people, but something made me snap at her, more fiercely than I had intended, ‘Why do you bother living there if it’s not your home?’” 💀
- Ok yea I am fairly sure the author took Deutschunterricht
- “She laughed her crazy laugh again, and I wondered if she had actual mental problems.” 💀
- “‘I’m sure it’s not that bad. Maybe you just need to change your thinking?’ // She turned away from me a little. ‘Why ‘do men always think they need to have an answer? It’s okay. I don’t expect you to solve my problems for me” 💀
- “I had never met a girl like this before; she seemed contained in herself, but behind the stillness she was an open wound. I didn’t know what to say to her. Normally when I go out with girls, we talk about movies or food, but I didn’t think she would be interested in these things.” 💀
- PSC scholar having mid career crisis. Also idt PSC Eng existed when the book came out the MC seems to be PSC general then studied EE vs PSC Eng
- Gahmen scholar having mid career crisis and another one who’s just given up on life
- “‘You’re just being spoilt. No one likes their job; why do you have to be so special? You think anyone really enjoys what they do all day? Just try to do your best; if you don’t think about it, then time will pass very quickly’ // ‘I don’t need you to be angry with me’ // ‘I’m not angry. I’m just trying to help you. You say you feel trapped, but where do you want to be? Life isn’t so bad, after all you have a good salary and Singapore is so easy to live in, low taxes and low crime and nice food. Isn’t that enough? Where else do you want to be?’ // ‘Anywhere. Anywhere except where I am’” no skull emoji this time
- The M_E scholar genuinely seems to be in crisis
- I intuit the irl pied piper is supposed to be a metaphor but for what? PSC? Sg career? Still can’t quite put a finger on it
- Self-destructive behaviour is generally not a good sign. Manic episode (unlikely) or just escapism borne out of crisis and despair
- “Once I don’t know why, I hacked into the MOE server to see if I could locate her, but this proved impossible because I had forgotten to ask for her name.” I don’t really buy the ending. MC had enough details (rough age, course of study) to cross-check publicly available scholar info (published in magazines/gazettes etc.) to get the other person’s name
Tick
- Mocking the sigma grandest
- The Suffering Artist
- Yes, that is how natural selection works. It’s why you have insecticide and antibiotic resistance
- No, the infamous “bubble” is for immunocompromised patients not hypersensitivity ones afaik. In one there is no immune system. In the other there is an immune system but it is overactive/wrongly-activated
- “Also ticks are arachnids not bugs”. spot on. They are both arthropoda but one is Insecta the other is Arachnida or chelicerata depending on laypersons’ classification some “bugs”
- You can in fact be allergic to air or water
- If MC wanted to concentrate there is a drug for that? Idk why the wife says there isn’t. They could technically consider Adderall
- Insect/Parasite infestations are a common hallucination in psychosis
- How will scratching chickenpox turn it to shingles. Shingles is when varicella zoster reactivates after a quiescent period
- “Then he hears his wife say, with more tenderness than he has heard from her in a decade, ‘You’re not doing great, are you? Poor baby, it hasn’t been easy for you’. Such caresses in her voice. Despite himself, a flicker of hope rises in his chest, a needle-thin crack of light. He looks up, ready to say something, then realises she was speaking to the dog.” 💀
Schwellenangst
- I am convinced Jeremy Tiang most definitely took German
- M_ELC trip hehehehaw
- “‘Entschuldigung, ist hier einen Rave?’ Hoping the German word is the same as in English. They so often are.” 💀 Ok tbf entschuldigung feels a bit too formal here maybe tut mir leid fits better
- “While stepping over the window sill, she’d made a mental note to refuse any drugs she was offered, but this now seems an unlikely contingency.”
- “Singaporeans are famous for being well-behaved.”
- “’No,’ says Sigrid, deadpan. ‘Everyone looks the same in Sweden. We can only tell each other apart by hair colour.’”
- “She gargles her r’s a little, which she has learnt makes her sound like a more proficient speaker.” 💀
- Ah yes, Kraft Durch Freude which reminds me the quizzical ?? I got when writing the German or Russian forms out during y4 history essays. Fun times
- Joke about incest
- Joke about returning with the same number of students. “Not any fewer, and certainly not any more” is a particularly memorable quote I once heard on the subject
- Sigrid smacks Peter count: 2
- Reminds me of how there’s a piece of the Berlinermauer in Bedok Reservoir Park. I remember cycling to go see it once and feeling quite underwhelmed when I saw it
- The sky does in fact seem bluer off the island. Scientifically, I think it’s because of an absence of high-altitude clouds and low-altitude cloud cover
- Nice ending
Sophia’s Aunt
- HTN T2DM and MI the triple trifecta
- The fluid intake restriction is a small but thoughtful detail. Furosemide dose arguments are greatly memed
- The melamine scandal _was_ quite big back then so fair enough. I’ve always thought whoever decided to add the melamine was trying to be Saul goodman but doing it quite badly. There are nontoxic alternatives to fake the assays they use for protein content since idt they run every sample through the gold-standard AP-MS
- China and India had pretty big organ trafficking rings for a while. Apart from the Caribbean, many western medical tourists would go there to have their transplant. I wonder if that’s what they’re going for in lieu of an LVAD
- “Camp-mates during re-education? Something like that.”
- The mention of the statue reminds me of a classmate I had who would sing the PRC anthem every day during break. He also had a rotating cast of Mao posters as his lock screen on his phone. Hearing him song taught me more Chinese words, albeit pronunciation botched by me, than I could have imagined
- NPO precautions before GA is due to the risk of aspiration from solid food but it is different from Nicholas needing to keep fluid intake down due to CHF. Considering the earlier moments of biological accuracy regarding the ticks and insects, a bit disappointing
- Bruh the guy is a finbro. I find it implausible he wouldn’t have insurance especially since he works at a bulge bracket firm presumably
- No. I cannot allow this story the generosity of so much creative license. You don’t incinerate it you autoclave it which is a bit like pressure cooking it vs just chucking it in a fire
- I quite like the authenticity of the build-up to this point + the portrayal of the experience of sickness
- Ah yes, the death row organ harvesting
- “She has not experienced this since school: an event so ominous it becomes impossible to see beyond, the emptiness of afterwards, the quiet desolation of the day after your last exam. Relief, of course, but also a dull ache, an absence like a missing tooth.”
- The mention of organ advertisements reminds me of how Iran actually runs a legal organ market (state-controlled) and many people will hawk their organs
- Steroid-induced mania and psychosis are indeed little-known but real complications from immunosuppressants
- Yuck. The dude is literally fresh out of CVICU on heavy immunosuppression. That is an easy way to introduce infection
- Very nicely tied in at the end. I actually quite like this story, as much as my rants on its inaccuracy may seem to suggest otherwise. Second only to Trondheim so far
Toronto
- I think this is the Trondheim teacher again. She must really hate going back
- Can’t tell if the subtle slip to singlish is deliberate but I like it
- “Then you’re an adult with no obligations and you’re free to do what you like. She tries to explain that it doesn’t work like that, at least where she comes from”
- “She has never protested anything before.”
- Idk it’s like the next beat of Trondheim since she’s further away from home now but still afflicted by the same problems
Harmonious
- Since the previous one was the M_E scholar from Trondheim this is probably the 90RP PCME NPC
- “The H_B had sent her to Oxford to read Geography, and now she was on a fast-track to the top. She would clearly not be spending much longer hanging around construction sites, but the Party always makes you spend a bit of time getting to know people o the ground before you leave them behind, so if you do well enough to stand for election you can claim to have grassroots support.”
- “Before I could say yes or no, he had hung up, my assent assumed.”
- This is like B99 but a sg civil service procedural show instead
- “Once the conversation moved onto ascribing blame, it was relatively simple for me to deflect it in other directions. The lift manufacturers, the various Ministries with a hand in this — though I stopped short of pointing the finger at Chen himself, even though to my mind he was every bit the author of his own misfortune.” 💀
- “‘I’m sure it’s all right. We just needed to meet her, to show we care.’ // ‘I guess I’m not used to dealing with members of the public.’ // ‘Public?’ She smiled. ‘Wait till you’re really dealing with the public, then you’ll know the meaning of the word difficult. Foreign workers don’t count. Who are they going to complain to?’” 💀
- “‘That’s very sad, but we can’t stop everything because of one man.’ // ‘Do you want to have lunch with me?’ // A defensive colour entered her eyes, and I knew I had mistimed this somehow.” 💀
- “‘I can’t sing,’ I responded. She seemed to accept this, and I knew for sure she was different from the other girls, the ones who would have urged me to try, be a sport, have a go — Li Hsia left me to myself, and sipped at the dregs of her orange juice. // ‘What made you choose Geography? To study I mean,’ I said, after the silence had grown dense. I was on my third bottle of beer and fuzzy around the edges.” 💀
- The guy’s getting friendzoned and doesn’t realise it? oof
- Impermanence of damage metaphor repeated again through the broken glass
- The dialogue throughout the stories is so authentically written
- “‘I don’t understand people like this. Why would she do such a thing? How will she remember him now?’ … ‘She must be crazy’, the policewoman was saying. ‘Why do these people behave like this? When my father died I was sad, but I didn’t behave like this. These people don’t understand.’”
- Transience / Impermanence x3 very nicely written into the plot
- “She looked straight at me with the wild stare of a cornered animal, trapped and furious, bright with helpless energy. Her eyes were no longer human. I backed slowly into the lift, but could not break her gaze until the doors slid shut between us.”
- My top stories are now Trondheim>Harmonious>Sophia’s Aunt
Stray
- Wait so the stories are actually connected. Nice
- Feelsbadman
- Workaholic…
- The part about being an anonymous corpse seems to link back to the Harmonious story
- “When she turned out the light, the darkness was total”
Meatpacking
- Is this the Trondheim/Toronto teacher again
- “She stares at them, wondering if this is a performance for her benefit, if they have coarsened their grammar and dialled up the Singlish as — what? A claim of authenticity? A provocation? I’m not— she begins, I’m from— But that is enough for her accent to expose her, for them to exchange knowing looks. Confirmation.”
- Yeah it’s the Trondheim/Toronto teacher
- “She says, Happy birthday, Singapore, and puts the receiver down”
- Is this the Shih-tzu author dude from earlier?
- Hmm maybe sussing out if people are the ones you’ve seen before is supposed to be part of the message. Since it’s about examining SG in light of travel anyway. So the readers are also experiencing that feeling of like hm have I seen this person before
- Ok yea it’s that dude
- Exploring homesickness and attachment? The teacher feels like she’s done with SG but also feeling kind of done with constantly running away from it all
- #Adulting
National Day
- St Johns is actually quite nice you can see the SJINML there
- Reference to No U-Turn Syndrome
- It Never Rains on National Day
- Cloud seeding reminds me of the Thai monarchy
- “Something something island sunshine home, syrupy and bland even in these choppy bursts. ‘Did you know the whole thing costs them seventeen million dollars every year?’ says Neelish, who spends his money at Internet cafes looking up facts like these. ‘Imagine it, so much money for such bad music.’”
- After examining SG in other countries this is like the reciprocal / contrapositive by examining SG through the lens of the Other here
- Happy Birthday Singapore feels like a reference to the Trondheim/Toronto/Meatpacking AWOL teacher. Maybe it’s supposed to show the inter-relations of the stories —> draw a parallel btwn her and this story’s MCs
Sophia’s Party
- So all 3 story arcs seem to converge on national day
- “‘You said you didn’t care about all this,’ protested Nicholas as she roamed the flat with her staple gun. She claimed it was all ironic, but he found himself wondering whether Singapore’s famously monolithic education system hadn’t left its mark on her after all.”
- Factual inaccuracy repeated twice. They either use helis or C130s for airdrops. R_AF doesn’t have jet transports or technically we do but it’s for refuelling or cargo rather than MFF/HALO
- Nothing Ever Goes Wrong on National Day
- Ah, the Joy from the M_ELC German trip. See my above thought on the interconnection of the stories
- “Watching from her perch, Diana says how proud she is of these brave men, defending the nation. ‘The propaganda parade,’ Nicholas snorts, then wonders if he has made a faux pas from the unyielding faces of the other two. Later Sophia will inform him Brian is fiercely loyal to his unit from National Service, and is perennially disappointed not to be chosen for the parade as part of his reservist duties.”
- “Nicholas winces at the bad grammar, before reminding himself not to be such a neo-colonialist.” Reminds me of “On your feetS up” tbh
- Calvin the PCME man. Lol is this a convergence of all the characters or something
- “She will reply that she felt sorry for [Calvin]; he doesn’t get on with his family and for some reason he’s been single forever.” 💀
- “If you don’t like it, feel free to leave, says Calvin sourly” 💀 Why are all the PCME man’s sentences so skull emoji-able
- The part about S_F planning the entire parade isn’t quite wrong afaik they do the heavy lifting
- “And all across the island, in tiny flats like this, people are sprawled before their TV sets, absorbing the entertainment provided for them, imbibing the messages, overt or not — though none particularly subtle — and feeling stirrings of patriotism and belonging. ‘Can it be that simple?’ wonders Nicholas. But it must work at some level. All the Singaporeans in this room have spent a few years abroad, and all have returned, the idea of greener pastures seeming not to occur to them at all.”
- “‘I thought maybe we could go for a drink, I mean, not all of us, just the two—’”💀 bruh this is the exact same thing he said before
- “‘This always happens, says Calvin, shaking his head. I’m a nice guy, I asked nicely, but they’re never interested in nice guys.’” 💀
- The dessert reminds me of the awkwardly delivered dialog in the Ferrero Rocher CNY YT ad running this year
- Lol Nicholas’ every criticism of NDP/SG was basically foiled by his acceptance of Sophia’s misleading version of events + his own thoughts as she delivered the recount
- The ending is surprisingly wholesome actually
Anyway... instead of a thoughtful, organised analysis you're hereby treated to more inglorious rambling from a literarily uninitiated mind
Overall
- Exploring Singaporeans but on holiday instead of on the island // through the other instead of themselves
- Very interesting and relatable stories tbh + the characters are all quite plausible
- The German references were a plus
- I did find the way loose ends were tied at the end somewhat wholesome, maybe for all the criticisms about things here there’s a certain niceness and charm after all. If you accept a more twisted way of looking at things, even the endings of questionable optimism can be granted some generosity of interpretation and taken to be warm in a certain way
Sophia’s Honeymoon
- Their r/s dynamic seems a bit off is Sophia supposed to be Nicholas’ trophy wife or something
- Nicholas reminds me of the old kind of finbro before the epicentre of global financial misconduct shifted to NY
- Ich mag auf Hochdeutsch spreche auch. Ich denke aber Schweizerdeutsch > Hochdeutsch
- I suspect the author took German 3rd lang
- Too early to actually comment on the story I feel since Sophia and <> appears multiple times more on the ToC
Trondheim
- Narrator sounds like a self-righteous RI 90RP PCME kid from a UG who went OCS during NS or smth
- Tbf ICL is a pretty good first guess for PSC Eng
- “She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn’t heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes.” 💀
- “That’s why I seldom go to the theatre. So depressing. Why not cheer up a bit? I prefer comedies. // Again, she looked at me like I was an idiot, as if she was tired of explaining things to me. I suddenly felt very angry. Of course she knew more about plays than I did; she was a girl, and a literature teacher. If we were talking about torques and pressure gradients then she would be the one to look stupid.” 💀
- “I nodded, and didn’t bother to reply. I had met a lot of girls like her. The pretty ones in the arts stream who giggled and whispered to each other during their Maths lectures, if they went to Maths lectures. In their spare time, they read a lot of Sylvia Plath and wrote indifferent poetry for the school magazine. Knowing where to pigeonhole her comforted but also puzzled me” 💀
- “I felt like I must be gaining status in her eyes; she sounded like she was really interested in me.” 💀
- “I could tell that she was being controversial, but I’ve met a lot of people like her, especially amongst overseas scholars. Some people spend a few years living outside Singapore and then think that gives them the right to criticise everything. I’ve seen them talking and laughing during the national anthem, making fun of the National Day Parade. Normally I try to avoid these people, but something made me snap at her, more fiercely than I had intended, ‘Why do you bother living there if it’s not your home?’” 💀
- Ok yea I am fairly sure the author took Deutschunterricht
- “She laughed her crazy laugh again, and I wondered if she had actual mental problems.” 💀
- “‘I’m sure it’s not that bad. Maybe you just need to change your thinking?’ // She turned away from me a little. ‘Why ‘do men always think they need to have an answer? It’s okay. I don’t expect you to solve my problems for me” 💀
- “I had never met a girl like this before; she seemed contained in herself, but behind the stillness she was an open wound. I didn’t know what to say to her. Normally when I go out with girls, we talk about movies or food, but I didn’t think she would be interested in these things.” 💀
- PSC scholar having mid career crisis. Also idt PSC Eng existed when the book came out the MC seems to be PSC general then studied EE vs PSC Eng
- Gahmen scholar having mid career crisis and another one who’s just given up on life
- “‘You’re just being spoilt. No one likes their job; why do you have to be so special? You think anyone really enjoys what they do all day? Just try to do your best; if you don’t think about it, then time will pass very quickly’ // ‘I don’t need you to be angry with me’ // ‘I’m not angry. I’m just trying to help you. You say you feel trapped, but where do you want to be? Life isn’t so bad, after all you have a good salary and Singapore is so easy to live in, low taxes and low crime and nice food. Isn’t that enough? Where else do you want to be?’ // ‘Anywhere. Anywhere except where I am’” no skull emoji this time
- The M_E scholar genuinely seems to be in crisis
- I intuit the irl pied piper is supposed to be a metaphor but for what? PSC? Sg career? Still can’t quite put a finger on it
- Self-destructive behaviour is generally not a good sign. Manic episode (unlikely) or just escapism borne out of crisis and despair
- “Once I don’t know why, I hacked into the MOE server to see if I could locate her, but this proved impossible because I had forgotten to ask for her name.” I don’t really buy the ending. MC had enough details (rough age, course of study) to cross-check publicly available scholar info (published in magazines/gazettes etc.) to get the other person’s name
Tick
- Mocking the sigma grandest
- The Suffering Artist
- Yes, that is how natural selection works. It’s why you have insecticide and antibiotic resistance
- No, the infamous “bubble” is for immunocompromised patients not hypersensitivity ones afaik. In one there is no immune system. In the other there is an immune system but it is overactive/wrongly-activated
- “Also ticks are arachnids not bugs”. spot on. They are both arthropoda but one is Insecta the other is Arachnida or chelicerata depending on laypersons’ classification some “bugs”
- You can in fact be allergic to air or water
- If MC wanted to concentrate there is a drug for that? Idk why the wife says there isn’t. They could technically consider Adderall
- Insect/Parasite infestations are a common hallucination in psychosis
- How will scratching chickenpox turn it to shingles. Shingles is when varicella zoster reactivates after a quiescent period
- “Then he hears his wife say, with more tenderness than he has heard from her in a decade, ‘You’re not doing great, are you? Poor baby, it hasn’t been easy for you’. Such caresses in her voice. Despite himself, a flicker of hope rises in his chest, a needle-thin crack of light. He looks up, ready to say something, then realises she was speaking to the dog.” 💀
Schwellenangst
- I am convinced Jeremy Tiang most definitely took German
- M_ELC trip hehehehaw
- “‘Entschuldigung, ist hier einen Rave?’ Hoping the German word is the same as in English. They so often are.” 💀 Ok tbf entschuldigung feels a bit too formal here maybe tut mir leid fits better
- “While stepping over the window sill, she’d made a mental note to refuse any drugs she was offered, but this now seems an unlikely contingency.”
- “Singaporeans are famous for being well-behaved.”
- “’No,’ says Sigrid, deadpan. ‘Everyone looks the same in Sweden. We can only tell each other apart by hair colour.’”
- “She gargles her r’s a little, which she has learnt makes her sound like a more proficient speaker.” 💀
- Ah yes, Kraft Durch Freude which reminds me the quizzical ?? I got when writing the German or Russian forms out during y4 history essays. Fun times
- Joke about incest
- Joke about returning with the same number of students. “Not any fewer, and certainly not any more” is a particularly memorable quote I once heard on the subject
- Sigrid smacks Peter count: 2
- Reminds me of how there’s a piece of the Berlinermauer in Bedok Reservoir Park. I remember cycling to go see it once and feeling quite underwhelmed when I saw it
- The sky does in fact seem bluer off the island. Scientifically, I think it’s because of an absence of high-altitude clouds and low-altitude cloud cover
- Nice ending
Sophia’s Aunt
- HTN T2DM and MI the triple trifecta
- The fluid intake restriction is a small but thoughtful detail. Furosemide dose arguments are greatly memed
- The melamine scandal _was_ quite big back then so fair enough. I’ve always thought whoever decided to add the melamine was trying to be Saul goodman but doing it quite badly. There are nontoxic alternatives to fake the assays they use for protein content since idt they run every sample through the gold-standard AP-MS
- China and India had pretty big organ trafficking rings for a while. Apart from the Caribbean, many western medical tourists would go there to have their transplant. I wonder if that’s what they’re going for in lieu of an LVAD
- “Camp-mates during re-education? Something like that.”
- The mention of the statue reminds me of a classmate I had who would sing the PRC anthem every day during break. He also had a rotating cast of Mao posters as his lock screen on his phone. Hearing him song taught me more Chinese words, albeit pronunciation botched by me, than I could have imagined
- NPO precautions before GA is due to the risk of aspiration from solid food but it is different from Nicholas needing to keep fluid intake down due to CHF. Considering the earlier moments of biological accuracy regarding the ticks and insects, a bit disappointing
- Bruh the guy is a finbro. I find it implausible he wouldn’t have insurance especially since he works at a bulge bracket firm presumably
- No. I cannot allow this story the generosity of so much creative license. You don’t incinerate it you autoclave it which is a bit like pressure cooking it vs just chucking it in a fire
- I quite like the authenticity of the build-up to this point + the portrayal of the experience of sickness
- Ah yes, the death row organ harvesting
- “She has not experienced this since school: an event so ominous it becomes impossible to see beyond, the emptiness of afterwards, the quiet desolation of the day after your last exam. Relief, of course, but also a dull ache, an absence like a missing tooth.”
- The mention of organ advertisements reminds me of how Iran actually runs a legal organ market (state-controlled) and many people will hawk their organs
- Steroid-induced mania and psychosis are indeed little-known but real complications from immunosuppressants
- Yuck. The dude is literally fresh out of CVICU on heavy immunosuppression. That is an easy way to introduce infection
- Very nicely tied in at the end. I actually quite like this story, as much as my rants on its inaccuracy may seem to suggest otherwise. Second only to Trondheim so far
Toronto
- I think this is the Trondheim teacher again. She must really hate going back
- Can’t tell if the subtle slip to singlish is deliberate but I like it
- “Then you’re an adult with no obligations and you’re free to do what you like. She tries to explain that it doesn’t work like that, at least where she comes from”
- “She has never protested anything before.”
- Idk it’s like the next beat of Trondheim since she’s further away from home now but still afflicted by the same problems
Harmonious
- Since the previous one was the M_E scholar from Trondheim this is probably the 90RP PCME NPC
- “The H_B had sent her to Oxford to read Geography, and now she was on a fast-track to the top. She would clearly not be spending much longer hanging around construction sites, but the Party always makes you spend a bit of time getting to know people o the ground before you leave them behind, so if you do well enough to stand for election you can claim to have grassroots support.”
- “Before I could say yes or no, he had hung up, my assent assumed.”
- This is like B99 but a sg civil service procedural show instead
- “Once the conversation moved onto ascribing blame, it was relatively simple for me to deflect it in other directions. The lift manufacturers, the various Ministries with a hand in this — though I stopped short of pointing the finger at Chen himself, even though to my mind he was every bit the author of his own misfortune.” 💀
- “‘I’m sure it’s all right. We just needed to meet her, to show we care.’ // ‘I guess I’m not used to dealing with members of the public.’ // ‘Public?’ She smiled. ‘Wait till you’re really dealing with the public, then you’ll know the meaning of the word difficult. Foreign workers don’t count. Who are they going to complain to?’” 💀
- “‘That’s very sad, but we can’t stop everything because of one man.’ // ‘Do you want to have lunch with me?’ // A defensive colour entered her eyes, and I knew I had mistimed this somehow.” 💀
- “‘I can’t sing,’ I responded. She seemed to accept this, and I knew for sure she was different from the other girls, the ones who would have urged me to try, be a sport, have a go — Li Hsia left me to myself, and sipped at the dregs of her orange juice. // ‘What made you choose Geography? To study I mean,’ I said, after the silence had grown dense. I was on my third bottle of beer and fuzzy around the edges.” 💀
- The guy’s getting friendzoned and doesn’t realise it? oof
- Impermanence of damage metaphor repeated again through the broken glass
- The dialogue throughout the stories is so authentically written
- “‘I don’t understand people like this. Why would she do such a thing? How will she remember him now?’ … ‘She must be crazy’, the policewoman was saying. ‘Why do these people behave like this? When my father died I was sad, but I didn’t behave like this. These people don’t understand.’”
- Transience / Impermanence x3 very nicely written into the plot
- “She looked straight at me with the wild stare of a cornered animal, trapped and furious, bright with helpless energy. Her eyes were no longer human. I backed slowly into the lift, but could not break her gaze until the doors slid shut between us.”
- My top stories are now Trondheim>Harmonious>Sophia’s Aunt
Stray
- Wait so the stories are actually connected. Nice
- Feelsbadman
- Workaholic…
- The part about being an anonymous corpse seems to link back to the Harmonious story
- “When she turned out the light, the darkness was total”
Meatpacking
- Is this the Trondheim/Toronto teacher again
- “She stares at them, wondering if this is a performance for her benefit, if they have coarsened their grammar and dialled up the Singlish as — what? A claim of authenticity? A provocation? I’m not— she begins, I’m from— But that is enough for her accent to expose her, for them to exchange knowing looks. Confirmation.”
- Yeah it’s the Trondheim/Toronto teacher
- “She says, Happy birthday, Singapore, and puts the receiver down”
- Is this the Shih-tzu author dude from earlier?
- Hmm maybe sussing out if people are the ones you’ve seen before is supposed to be part of the message. Since it’s about examining SG in light of travel anyway. So the readers are also experiencing that feeling of like hm have I seen this person before
- Ok yea it’s that dude
- Exploring homesickness and attachment? The teacher feels like she’s done with SG but also feeling kind of done with constantly running away from it all
- #Adulting
National Day
- St Johns is actually quite nice you can see the SJINML there
- Reference to No U-Turn Syndrome
- It Never Rains on National Day
- Cloud seeding reminds me of the Thai monarchy
- “Something something island sunshine home, syrupy and bland even in these choppy bursts. ‘Did you know the whole thing costs them seventeen million dollars every year?’ says Neelish, who spends his money at Internet cafes looking up facts like these. ‘Imagine it, so much money for such bad music.’”
- After examining SG in other countries this is like the reciprocal / contrapositive by examining SG through the lens of the Other here
- Happy Birthday Singapore feels like a reference to the Trondheim/Toronto/Meatpacking AWOL teacher. Maybe it’s supposed to show the inter-relations of the stories —> draw a parallel btwn her and this story’s MCs
Sophia’s Party
- So all 3 story arcs seem to converge on national day
- “‘You said you didn’t care about all this,’ protested Nicholas as she roamed the flat with her staple gun. She claimed it was all ironic, but he found himself wondering whether Singapore’s famously monolithic education system hadn’t left its mark on her after all.”
- Factual inaccuracy repeated twice. They either use helis or C130s for airdrops. R_AF doesn’t have jet transports or technically we do but it’s for refuelling or cargo rather than MFF/HALO
- Nothing Ever Goes Wrong on National Day
- Ah, the Joy from the M_ELC German trip. See my above thought on the interconnection of the stories
- “Watching from her perch, Diana says how proud she is of these brave men, defending the nation. ‘The propaganda parade,’ Nicholas snorts, then wonders if he has made a faux pas from the unyielding faces of the other two. Later Sophia will inform him Brian is fiercely loyal to his unit from National Service, and is perennially disappointed not to be chosen for the parade as part of his reservist duties.”
- “Nicholas winces at the bad grammar, before reminding himself not to be such a neo-colonialist.” Reminds me of “On your feetS up” tbh
- Calvin the PCME man. Lol is this a convergence of all the characters or something
- “She will reply that she felt sorry for [Calvin]; he doesn’t get on with his family and for some reason he’s been single forever.” 💀
- “If you don’t like it, feel free to leave, says Calvin sourly” 💀 Why are all the PCME man’s sentences so skull emoji-able
- The part about S_F planning the entire parade isn’t quite wrong afaik they do the heavy lifting
- “And all across the island, in tiny flats like this, people are sprawled before their TV sets, absorbing the entertainment provided for them, imbibing the messages, overt or not — though none particularly subtle — and feeling stirrings of patriotism and belonging. ‘Can it be that simple?’ wonders Nicholas. But it must work at some level. All the Singaporeans in this room have spent a few years abroad, and all have returned, the idea of greener pastures seeming not to occur to them at all.”
- “‘I thought maybe we could go for a drink, I mean, not all of us, just the two—’”💀 bruh this is the exact same thing he said before
- “‘This always happens, says Calvin, shaking his head. I’m a nice guy, I asked nicely, but they’re never interested in nice guys.’” 💀
- The dessert reminds me of the awkwardly delivered dialog in the Ferrero Rocher CNY YT ad running this year
- Lol Nicholas’ every criticism of NDP/SG was basically foiled by his acceptance of Sophia’s misleading version of events + his own thoughts as she delivered the recount
- The ending is surprisingly wholesome actually
October 29, 2016
Of all the short stories in this book, I like 'National Day' a lot. I was able to feel the emotions by these bangladeshi bhaiyya. It was a bit weird at first, to be reading 'I built that' but I realised it's true. Sure, we do have the architects, URA officers & etc but the people who are directly involved in building these are the bhaiyyas; at least majority of them do.
'Look, look at them running away from their own birthday party, what kind of people are they, that would never happen back at home'
I have mixed feelings on this. Holidays are meant to be rest days for almost all working adults and sometimes, it's being utilised by going to other places other than staying home. The National Day Parade is always in the evening so morning and afternoon can be spent at other places and when it's nearing the evening, find a place to watch it together with family and friends. :)
The ending of this story though *sigh*. Why did Neelish do that? Giving up is not the way.
'Look, look at them running away from their own birthday party, what kind of people are they, that would never happen back at home'
I have mixed feelings on this. Holidays are meant to be rest days for almost all working adults and sometimes, it's being utilised by going to other places other than staying home. The National Day Parade is always in the evening so morning and afternoon can be spent at other places and when it's nearing the evening, find a place to watch it together with family and friends. :)
The ending of this story though *sigh*. Why did Neelish do that? Giving up is not the way.
February 9, 2017
Superb – astute. Assured.
January 25, 2016
Having grown up in Singapore and been living overseas for the past 6 years as a student, I found many of the characters in Jeremy's book easily relatable, and I suspect many other overseas Singaporeans will feel the same. I thoroughly enjoyed Jeremy's writing style, and fully appreciated many of the hints of 'Singaporean'-ness that so eloquently captured a lot of the country's flavour.
The only downside is that I found myself craving more; what happens to these characters after the story ends?? His stories are so full of life that you cannot help but wish that he had written a full novel on each of the characters and their stories.
The only downside is that I found myself craving more; what happens to these characters after the story ends?? His stories are so full of life that you cannot help but wish that he had written a full novel on each of the characters and their stories.
November 15, 2025
Felt that the stories were too short and not fully fleshed out sufficiently. There could have been more exploration to the characters and plot beyond a short story.
January 4, 2016
Another excellent publication by Epigram.
These short stories -- woven by some repeated characters -- paint a real picture of Singapore and the transglobal Singaporean.
My particular favourite was the one of the foreign workers and their perception of Singapore and Singaporeans. Everyone should read it. It will make us view the people who help build and maintain our country differently.
These short stories -- woven by some repeated characters -- paint a real picture of Singapore and the transglobal Singaporean.
My particular favourite was the one of the foreign workers and their perception of Singapore and Singaporeans. Everyone should read it. It will make us view the people who help build and maintain our country differently.
August 5, 2018
Got through the first three. The writing is solid at best, and nothing that the world still needed to hear is conveyed in them. If that gets nominated for a literature award in Singapore, it is not a good sign for the state of the art there.
March 24, 2016
Beautiful set of stories that are the very making of a Collective Memory.
June 27, 2020
Tiang's book is melancholic and wistful, following Singaporeans in mixed states of homesickness and displacement as they traverse the world. The short stories record vignetted encounters and punctuated events--a runaway Singaporean teacher on a train in Norway, meeting another; a Singaporean woman briefly joins a rave in Germany--and sometimes the story settles uncomfortably back into status quo, while other times the characters seem to gain a smallest fraction of self-knowledge, or self-recapitulation. The characters are interweaved, surfacing in each other's stories.
There are parts of the book I liked. The first story, "Sophia's Honeymoon", is right up my alley; it is about a newlywed woman who faces the realisation that marriage to a wealthy British man might have neutered her, caught her in a trap. I think the Sophia and Nicholas story throughout the book is done well, in general--a portrait of an ambivalent marriage, full of mutual compromise and disappointment with occasional glimpses of tenderness, all drawn against the backdrop of global mobility and cultural displacement. I also liked "National Day", which is about a group of migrant construction workers who head to St. John's Island to see the national day fireworks.
But I think overall I will not remember much of this book in a few months to come. The tales and themes of rich-ish Chinese-ish Singaporeans longing for escape but fearing to make the most of it while strung out all over Europe and the US do not personally excite me. A lot of Singlit I read seems to focus on this theme; I understand the resonance, but am not really interested in it. Tiang's style is understated, implicit, and tasteful, which means that the stories are affective and abstract, full of unreliable narrators that do not fully articulate what they think. While this works well for some books, here it comes across as a sense of disenchantment that isn't rooted in reflexivity or awareness. As someone who thinks it IS important to put into clear words my own simultaneous frustration and love for this country, I feel impatient with this.
I don't like the Goodreads stars system: I don't think this is a bad set of short stories, and in fact I don't think I have ever felt that any of the books I have reviewed are "bad", or that books can be objectively "bad". Some books have more to teach me than others, and my reading experience is shaped by my own preferences and lenses. I loved "State of Emergency", but this just wasn't for me.
There are parts of the book I liked. The first story, "Sophia's Honeymoon", is right up my alley; it is about a newlywed woman who faces the realisation that marriage to a wealthy British man might have neutered her, caught her in a trap. I think the Sophia and Nicholas story throughout the book is done well, in general--a portrait of an ambivalent marriage, full of mutual compromise and disappointment with occasional glimpses of tenderness, all drawn against the backdrop of global mobility and cultural displacement. I also liked "National Day", which is about a group of migrant construction workers who head to St. John's Island to see the national day fireworks.
But I think overall I will not remember much of this book in a few months to come. The tales and themes of rich-ish Chinese-ish Singaporeans longing for escape but fearing to make the most of it while strung out all over Europe and the US do not personally excite me. A lot of Singlit I read seems to focus on this theme; I understand the resonance, but am not really interested in it. Tiang's style is understated, implicit, and tasteful, which means that the stories are affective and abstract, full of unreliable narrators that do not fully articulate what they think. While this works well for some books, here it comes across as a sense of disenchantment that isn't rooted in reflexivity or awareness. As someone who thinks it IS important to put into clear words my own simultaneous frustration and love for this country, I feel impatient with this.
I don't like the Goodreads stars system: I don't think this is a bad set of short stories, and in fact I don't think I have ever felt that any of the books I have reviewed are "bad", or that books can be objectively "bad". Some books have more to teach me than others, and my reading experience is shaped by my own preferences and lenses. I loved "State of Emergency", but this just wasn't for me.
October 9, 2025
Quotes that stayed with me:
“She turns a corner expecting a fountain that is not there, and realises she is lost. She tries to retrace her steps to the McDonald's but the sloping, angular streets defeat her…Many years later, Sophia will think of this night, and how close she was to tears. She will wonder how she could have allowed herself to arrive there, but also feel a twinge of loss for the girl still capable of losing control.”
"So which are you?" She looked at me ap-praisingly, her eyes narrowed. "Singaporean or Malaysian?"
"Singaporean."
"I thought so. Civil service?"
I nodded. "Engineer.
"You don't have to tell me. Glasses and checked shirt. Plus you have two ballpoint pens in your shirt pocket."
I laughed, trying not to sound uneasy.
"You've studied here?" she said, making me feel uncomfortable with the way she was looking at me, as if I were a specimen. I felt like I was once again in the army, and everything important about me could be deciphered from the little tags sewn onto my uniform.
“Singaporean etiquette suggested that I should ask her which junior college she had gone to, especially as we were about the same age and probably had friends in common, but that conversational route seemed unspeakably boring just then, so instead I asked her how long she had been travelling.”
"Why do men always think they need to have an answer? It's okay. I don't expect you to solve my problems for me."
“Singaporeans are famous for being well-behaved."
“She finds herself laughing joyously, for no reason at all, and nobody around her finds this in the least bit odd.”
“Li Hsia was also a scholar. The HDB had sent her to Oxford to read Geography, and now she was on a fast-track to the top. She would clearly not be spending much longer hanging around construction sites, but the Party always makes you spend a bit of time getting to know people on the ground before you leave them behind, so if you do well enough to stand for election you can claim to have grassroots support.”
“Her day needs remarkably little to gain a shape, to feel less empty at the end. She doesn't know where she'll be tomorrow, or even an hour from now, but she'll be somewhere. The wind fluffs her hair and she tilts her head back, admiring the lacquered blue bowl of the sky, wondrously cloudless, empty apart from the white blaze of the sun. There is nothing else, no fire-works, but it'll do.”
“She turns a corner expecting a fountain that is not there, and realises she is lost. She tries to retrace her steps to the McDonald's but the sloping, angular streets defeat her…Many years later, Sophia will think of this night, and how close she was to tears. She will wonder how she could have allowed herself to arrive there, but also feel a twinge of loss for the girl still capable of losing control.”
"So which are you?" She looked at me ap-praisingly, her eyes narrowed. "Singaporean or Malaysian?"
"Singaporean."
"I thought so. Civil service?"
I nodded. "Engineer.
"You don't have to tell me. Glasses and checked shirt. Plus you have two ballpoint pens in your shirt pocket."
I laughed, trying not to sound uneasy.
"You've studied here?" she said, making me feel uncomfortable with the way she was looking at me, as if I were a specimen. I felt like I was once again in the army, and everything important about me could be deciphered from the little tags sewn onto my uniform.
“Singaporean etiquette suggested that I should ask her which junior college she had gone to, especially as we were about the same age and probably had friends in common, but that conversational route seemed unspeakably boring just then, so instead I asked her how long she had been travelling.”
"Why do men always think they need to have an answer? It's okay. I don't expect you to solve my problems for me."
“Singaporeans are famous for being well-behaved."
“She finds herself laughing joyously, for no reason at all, and nobody around her finds this in the least bit odd.”
“Li Hsia was also a scholar. The HDB had sent her to Oxford to read Geography, and now she was on a fast-track to the top. She would clearly not be spending much longer hanging around construction sites, but the Party always makes you spend a bit of time getting to know people on the ground before you leave them behind, so if you do well enough to stand for election you can claim to have grassroots support.”
“Her day needs remarkably little to gain a shape, to feel less empty at the end. She doesn't know where she'll be tomorrow, or even an hour from now, but she'll be somewhere. The wind fluffs her hair and she tilts her head back, admiring the lacquered blue bowl of the sky, wondrously cloudless, empty apart from the white blaze of the sun. There is nothing else, no fire-works, but it'll do.”
July 21, 2019
This book was a bit of a surprise for me. Bought it on a whim a few years ago in a local (Singapore) bookstore, and never really got around to it until I was nostalgic for Singaporean stuff. I feel really lucky to have randomly picked this as one of the few books to take along when I moved.
Tiang's writing is excellent, yes, and there are many authors who write as well or better. What makes this book special is it speaks to me so deeply about the nuanced complexities of being Singaporean, living in Singapore or elsewhere.
I'll try not to spoil anything, but the last two stories were my favourite, possibly because they were told from the perspective of non-Singaporeans. Yet readers shouldn't skip ahead to those stories -- I've read the book in order and I feel that this made the later stories richer, and the later stories added to my appreciation of the earlier stories.
And now I'm finished it. I have discovered a new fave, and yet feel that bittersweetness of finishing a book I love. I'm not sure any other contemporary short story collection can top this for me. It sits comfortably on my all-time favourites with Zen Cho's Spirits Abroad, which I'd recommend to readers who also love fantasy.
Tiang's writing is excellent, yes, and there are many authors who write as well or better. What makes this book special is it speaks to me so deeply about the nuanced complexities of being Singaporean, living in Singapore or elsewhere.
I'll try not to spoil anything, but the last two stories were my favourite, possibly because they were told from the perspective of non-Singaporeans. Yet readers shouldn't skip ahead to those stories -- I've read the book in order and I feel that this made the later stories richer, and the later stories added to my appreciation of the earlier stories.
And now I'm finished it. I have discovered a new fave, and yet feel that bittersweetness of finishing a book I love. I'm not sure any other contemporary short story collection can top this for me. It sits comfortably on my all-time favourites with Zen Cho's Spirits Abroad, which I'd recommend to readers who also love fantasy.
November 18, 2023
This book did not really do much for me, but I did not dislike it either.
I personally felt this book was written for a Westerner, like an introduction to Singapore yet at the same time not being a very good one. The writing was draggy which is weird because it is a series of short stories. However it could just be due to the fact that I am not a fan of short stories in general. Most of the characters in the story are Singaporeans living overseas, which while some stories were touching and (one) relatable, several others fell flat - choosing many a time to tell rather than show. I skimmed through the national day story.
I did enjoy that the writer did not shy away from showing flawed characters with vulnerabilities and the thought processes that consequents certain actions, and how it affects the people around them. It is easy to judge the privileged characters who do not recognise they are so, but the stories highlight how people who are brought up in a specific environment carry certain ways of thinking into adulthood that make it hard for them to see the perspectives of others. I think the writer did a good job of writing flawed characters that you can sympathise with (although it seems other reviewers do not feel the same).
I personally felt this book was written for a Westerner, like an introduction to Singapore yet at the same time not being a very good one. The writing was draggy which is weird because it is a series of short stories. However it could just be due to the fact that I am not a fan of short stories in general. Most of the characters in the story are Singaporeans living overseas, which while some stories were touching and (one) relatable, several others fell flat - choosing many a time to tell rather than show. I skimmed through the national day story.
I did enjoy that the writer did not shy away from showing flawed characters with vulnerabilities and the thought processes that consequents certain actions, and how it affects the people around them. It is easy to judge the privileged characters who do not recognise they are so, but the stories highlight how people who are brought up in a specific environment carry certain ways of thinking into adulthood that make it hard for them to see the perspectives of others. I think the writer did a good job of writing flawed characters that you can sympathise with (although it seems other reviewers do not feel the same).
April 16, 2024
I enjoyed Tiang's Prize winning novel State of Emergency, so I decided to read his debut collection of short stories. Overall, I enjoyed them, although I have to confess I am not a fan of the genre of short stories, as they always leaving me somehow unsatisfied. These are eleven loosely connected stories of Singaporeans abroad, disenfranchised but also nostalgic of their country. The characters are stereotyped, but the appeal is more in the stories, rather than the personalities of the characters. Trondheim, National Day, and Sophia's Party are my favorite. And then there is the brilliance of the title, which comes from an observation of a migrant worker in one of the stories. It nicely captures the controlling nature of Singaporean society, being this just a natural process or triggered by government's action. I don't even know if it is true, but it is a cleaver sentence!
June 6, 2020
An engaging collection of immensely readable short stories. Tiang clearly has a knack for writing about the mundane with superb accuracy and clarity. I liked how the stories were loosely linked by recurring characters and naturally had a slight bias towards this collection largely made up of Singaporeans abroad/ in a relationship with a non-Singaporean/ wandering slightly adrift and unsure of their identity or purpose in life. However, as much as I have an objective appreciation for this book, not once did the stories evoke any strong feelings in me so unfortunately this 3.5 stars gets just 3.
September 1, 2020
As a collection of short singaporean inspired stories, the immediate comparison is to be drawn to Ministry of Moral Panic. Honestly, it’s a tad of a let down.
Although the high points of Sophia’s party, trondheim and Harmonious Residences are certainly moving and thought provoking (especially considering the plight of foreign workers in 2020 with the Covid-19 implications), the rest of the collection is mostly forgettable. Certainly the common theme of what it means to be singaporean in foreign lands, as a foreigner or coming back after awhile is a worthwhile one to tackle.
I just wish there wasn’t such a distinct fall off in the less thought out stories.
Although the high points of Sophia’s party, trondheim and Harmonious Residences are certainly moving and thought provoking (especially considering the plight of foreign workers in 2020 with the Covid-19 implications), the rest of the collection is mostly forgettable. Certainly the common theme of what it means to be singaporean in foreign lands, as a foreigner or coming back after awhile is a worthwhile one to tackle.
I just wish there wasn’t such a distinct fall off in the less thought out stories.
October 27, 2023
first time borrowing a book from the school library LOL anyway here is a pretty useless review that i wrote for each short story while reading this book
1. sophia's honeymoon: oooh interesting, reminds me of miss brill
2. trondheim: somewhat interesting?
3. tick: meh
4. schwellenangst: meh
5. sophia's aunt: it was okayyy
6. toronto: this was fine
7. harmonious residences: interesting! but was surprised when it ended because i thought there was going to be more
8. stray: hmm interesting?
9. meatpacking: not bad
10. national day: i really liked this! possibly my favourite so far
11. sophia's party: i liked this :-)
1. sophia's honeymoon: oooh interesting, reminds me of miss brill
2. trondheim: somewhat interesting?
3. tick: meh
4. schwellenangst: meh
5. sophia's aunt: it was okayyy
6. toronto: this was fine
7. harmonious residences: interesting! but was surprised when it ended because i thought there was going to be more
8. stray: hmm interesting?
9. meatpacking: not bad
10. national day: i really liked this! possibly my favourite so far
11. sophia's party: i liked this :-)
June 14, 2018
I got to know about this book when I attended Jeremy Tiang's talk on translation some weeks ago. The writing is lyrical and I managed to finish the book within a few days. I wished I could do a thorough review on the book but I have yet to finish reading it again to do a good job.
The characters in the book are mostly escapists, people who are tired of Singapore's system but lost on where to go if they do not settle and try to fit in. Also, as the title suggests, it is a book about how things are always made to seem perfect in Singapore but the underlying truth might say otherwise.
The characters in the book are mostly escapists, people who are tired of Singapore's system but lost on where to go if they do not settle and try to fit in. Also, as the title suggests, it is a book about how things are always made to seem perfect in Singapore but the underlying truth might say otherwise.
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