The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovida Yu - 2017- A Novel

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The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovida Yu - 2017- A Novel

Historical Fiction set in Singapore in 1936 with the English Still in Control but trouble coming soon.

Shu Li has just graduated from a Mission School. She is her late teens, her parents are deceased , she was raised by her grandmother and uncle.   Her uncle wants to marry her to one of his business associates, she wants no part of that. Her dream is to become a journalist. They get her a job with the Singapore Police Inspector as Housekeeper.  

 The Police Inspector gets her a job working for the acting Governor.  He has a 17 year old daughter with the mentality of a seven year old.  His son, his sister and his second wife, the first passed, also live in the Governor’s Mansion.  Charity, the daughter’s helper just died in a fall from an upper story window.  The Inspector General has been called in to investigate.  She has a cut in her side that arouses his suspicion.  From this a complex web evolves.

The novel deals directly with the attitudes  of native Singaporians of Chinese descent and the British to each other.  A good feel for colony life is devloped.

The ending is very exciting with Sin Li barely escaping being murdered.

The mystery drew me in.  My guesses about who the killer was were wrong.   

“OVIDIA YU

Ovidia Yu is one of Singapore's best-known and most acclaimed writers. As well as award winning short stories and a children's book, she has had over thirty plays performed and is author of the Aunty Lee books, featuring a crime solving Tai Tai, and the Colonial Crime series set in Colonial Singapore” from Goodreads 

Mel Ulm

 

A Thoroughly Modern Ghost of Other Origin - A Short Story by Elaine Chiew - from her Debut Collection - The Heartsick Diaspora - 2020

"A Thoroughly Modern Ghost of Other Origin" by Elaine Chiew, story six in The Heartsick Diaspora


"But a pontianak has more currency somehow, I say. You can be a marker of Singaporean diversity."

In Singapore even the ghosts, spirits of the dead, arise from sundry Diasporas.

During seventh month in the Chinese Calender, demons of various forms are released from Hell, to reap havoc on the living.  Like the citizens of Singapore, the demons have roots in China and Malaysia.  Unlike the last four stories from The Heartsick Diaspora I have posted upon, this story is set in Singapore.  The narrator is a late teenage boy living with his large family and an Indonesian helper.  They are a middle class family. 

Of course he is obsessed with girls.  He also has a unique ability, he can see ghosts. His mother gets upset when discovers him talking to ghosts.  She doesn't want them attracted to her home.  I learned a lot about the ghosts of Singapore in this story.  I admit I used Google to learn about the multicultural demons of Singapore.  Now days the Festival of Hungry Ghosts is an event to celebrate the heritage of Singapore.  

The narrator is in his room when suddenly he sees a Pontianak in his room.  She tells him she is very hungry, she wants blood. Being very freighted, and ok maybe a bit excited by a female in his room who he is not related to, a first, he gets some congealed pig blood from the refrigerator for her.  She returns and demands his blood or his life.

"Here are some facts about the pontianak, a female Malay vampire: • As a human, died during childbirth, and as a result, wants to prey on the blood of men and other helpless folk."

The Hungry Ghosts  of Singapore seem to be mostly female, maybe they are drawn to his burgeoning sex drive, seeking revenge on males.

"A Thoroughly Modern Ghost of Other Origin shows us a different side of life in Singapore, not focused on the rich but on an ordinary family working for a living.  We see the dynamics of the family with the mother very much charge.

This is a very entertaining story, taking us below the glittering affluence of Singapore to ancient beliefs brought in with the various diasporas that built Singapore.

Elaine Chiew

Elaine is a writer and a visual arts researcher, and editor of Cooked Up: Food Fiction From Around the World (New Internationalist, 2015).
Twice winner of the Bridport Short Story Competition, she has published numerous stories in anthologies in the UK, US and Singapore.

Originally from Malaysia, Chiew graduated from Stanford Law School and worked as a corporate securities lawyer in New York and Hong Kong before studying for an MA in Asian Art History at Lasalle College of the Arts Singapore, a degree conferred by Goldsmiths, University of London.

Elaine lives in Singapore and her book, The Heartsick Diaspora, and other stories, will be published by Myriad in 2020..from epchiew.com

Last month I posted upon a Japanese  authored short story  focusing on a related Japanese tradition.  This made me wonder how ancient this tradition might be,  what way back diaspora left this belief about returning ghosts all over East Asia.  Maybe we are being taken into pre-history.


"Waymarkers" by Natsuko Koroda, translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda, from Words Without Borders, November, 2015 

I look forward to posting on the remaining eight stories in The Heartsick Diaspora.

Mel u

Chronicles of a Culinary Poseur - A Short Story by Elaine Chiew - from her collection The Heartsick Diaspora -2020.

Chronicles of a Culinary Poseur by Elaine Chiew - 2020

Gateway to Elaine Chiew on The Reading Life

Chronicles of a Culinary Poseur is the fourth story from Elaine Chiew's marvelous debut collection, The Heartsick Diaspora which I have featured. All of the stories center on Singaporeans  but only one of the four stories is set in Singapore.  

Today's story is set in Manhattan, centering on a very haute cuisine French -Asian fusion restaurant Lumiére recently started  by Kara and  her sisters from Singapore.  A pretentious blogger over convinced of their importance (ouch..) tells Kara a review from her will make her place a great success. Kara  mortgaged the family home to get start up capital.  She is already in trouble, borrowing operating expenses from The Woon Leong Benevolent Chinese Association.

 "Ever since then, loose-limbed, scary-looking thugs came by once every week to eat and ‘keep an eye on things’. What did Bernard know about any of it, but the gossip-monger he no doubt was, he’d probably heard that Kara couldn’t pay her seafood supplier this week and had to resort to Chinatown garoupa."

The blogger, Lenna, speaking to the executive head chef Bernard:

"Leena was saying, ‘With my clout, I’ll have you back in the black with a single good review. Watch me, Handsome. And you can kiss my hand later.’ She held out a hand bedecked with fat clusters of jewels. At least she wasn’t dressed like a tarot card reader."

Leena shows up, creating panic in the restaurant, with a friend.  She is seated next to two gentlemen from "The Woon Leong Benevolent Chinese Association (benevolent, my ass)".  Unexpected culinary results ensue from this proximity. I don't want to give away much more of this story, it really is tremendous fun, other than to say you will relish the ending and wish you could get a complimentary meal at Lumiére, now a rising star in the top end Manhattan dining scene.  There are very fun to read scenes in the restaurant, lots of egos.  

Singapore is built on diaspora, in this story Kara speaks with pride when she says her family is third generation Singaporeans

There are ten more stories in The Heartsick Diaspora.  I will be posting on all of them.  I only give this kind of attention to writers for whom I have great regard.

I strongly recommend this collection to all who love short stories




Elaine Chiew
Elaine is a writer and a visual arts researcher, and editor of Cooked Up: Food Fiction From Around the World (New Internationalist, 2015).
Twice winner of the Bridport Short Story Competition, she has published numerous stories in anthologies in the UK, US and Singapore.

Originally from Malaysia, Chiew graduated from Stanford Law School and worked as a corporate securities lawyer in New York and Hong Kong before studying for an MA in Asian Art History at Lasalle College of the Arts Singapore, a degree conferred by Goldsmiths, University of London.

Elaine lives in Singapore and her book, The Heartsick Diaspora, and other stories, will be published by Myriad in 2020..from epchiew.com 


Mel u

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal - 2017

Erotic Stories of Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Be warned, this novel might shock you, might leave you feeling the need for your own erotic encounters.  For sure I did not at first quite believe what I was reading.

The plot centers around Nikki, born in London to Punjabi immigrants.  Her parents are Sikhs. The lives of women are very much still defined by traditions imported from India.  Nikki, about twenty, is trying to find a way to live in harmony with the very judgemental Sikh community (there is even group of young men who monitor unmarried women for improper dress and such).  Nikki's father recently died, she is a law school drop out, currently working as a bartender. After talking to her more traditional sister and her mother about the direction of her life, she decides to try to earn extra money, some of which will go to her mother, by starting a class in creative writing for women at the London Punjabi center.  The family conversations revolve around Nikki's lack of direction.

As Jaswal wonderfully shows us, marriages were still often  arranged and had to be with another Sikh.  Nikki scorns ads placed on a match making board at the center.  Her venture into internet matchmaking websites was just hilarious, a marvelous satrical  segment.

When her class begins the students are all Widows, it seems married or single women are not supposed to go out to classes.  Nikki plans on teaching creative writing, through a workshop like approach.  She is surprised to learn some of the women cannot write in English or Punjabi.   Most of the students thought they were signing up to learn to write English.  Nikki at first does not know how to begin.  One of the students finds a collection of erotic stories and shares them with the class.  Soon Nikki realizes the women can be drawn out by having those who can write, produce stories of erotic encounters.  They end up producing very sensual most would say X-rated stories about sexual encounters. Most of the women have been with only their late husbands. We see the women begin to rise above their cultural restrictions.  We learn one is not a widow but was abandoned by her husband.

Nikki does have her own romance.  It runs most of the course of the novel and was very integral to the novel.

Jaswal is a very talented writer.  The conversations are perfect, the characters real and she gives us a very good feel for the London Punjabi community.  I liked Nikki and her family.  The erotic stories are a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed Erotic Stories of Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal.  

This is a very perceptive totally fun to read work.  

BALLI KAUR JASWAL . From ballijaswal.com

is the author of Inheritance, which won the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2014 and was adapted into a film at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts in 2017.Her second novel Sugarbread was a finalist for the 2015 inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize and the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize. 

Her third novel Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows (Harper Collins/William Morrow) was released internationally to critical acclaim in March 2017. Translation rights to this novel have been sold in France, Spain, Italy, Israel, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Greece, China, Brazil and Estonia. Film rights to Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows have been acquired by Ridley Scott’s production company, Scott Free Productions and Film Four in the UK. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows was also picked by Reese Witherspoon’s book club and The Girly Book Club in 2018.

Jaswal’s short fiction and non-fiction writing have appeared in the UK Sunday Express, Cosmopolitan Magazine, The New York Times, Harpers Bazaar, Conde Nast Traveller and Best Australian Short Stories, among other publications and periodicals. She has travelled widely to appear in international writers festivals to conduct workshops and lectures on creative writing, pursuing an artistic career, the power of storytelling, global citizenship and social justice advocacy through literature. A former writing fellow at the University of East Anglia, Jaswal has taught creative writing at Yale-NUS College and Nanyang Technological University where she is currently pursuing a PhD. 

Jaswal’s new novel, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters, will be released in April 2019. The novel is a dark comedy following the travels of three British-Indian sisters on a pilgrimage in India to fulfil their late mother’s final wishes.

I really want to read her latest novel, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters.

Mel u

“Of Durians and Vipers” - A Short Story by Damyanti Biswas - The Griffith Review -2015

Daily Write- Website of Damyanti Biswas

You May Read Today’s Story Here

“Of Durians and Vipers” by Damyanti Biswas

“Of Durians and Vipers” is set on a Durian plantation in Bali Pulau on Penang Island, Malaysia.  The plantation is owned by Rick, a Canadian expat, who has lived longer on Penang Island than his native Canada and his wife.  He is married to a Chinese woman, the daughter of a plantation owner.  His In Laws did not initially approve of him.

They have a sixteen year old Chinese-Canadian daughter Connie. Rick’s wife was the one who built up the plantation, ran the household, the durian business and got them on The Durian Plantation Tour program.  Now that his wife is very ill, Connie runs the tours.  Rick feels more than a little lost.  The tourists love to feast on Durians.  

Penang is a prime tourist spot for residents of Manila, Singapore and of course Kuala Lumpur.  It is a World Heritage destination for the architectural remains of the pre-World War Two era and has lots of beautiful beaches, five star resorts and such.  It is also famous for Durians.  Durians are but they smell horrible, so horrible airlines ban them.  Black and Yellow Vipers live in the trees.  We learn their bite is nasty but not normally fatal.  Of course nobody wants snakes in the house so Rick’s wife used to make sure the maids kept them out.  They do keep down rats and such so they have value.

Rick’s wife is now almost a complete invalid, rarely getting out of bed.  They employ two women as nurses, one an Indian and the other Chinese.  Rick is very involved in her care. Biswas does a brilliant job letting us see the impact this has on Rick. His wife used to totally take care of everything.  We see Rick oscillating from guilt to resentment.  Still a young man, he is deeply ashamed of his first ever act of adultery, with his wife’s Indian nurse.  I sort of got the feeling she was hoping when the wife passes, to play a role in Rick’s life.

Snakes are all over plantation, even entering Rick’s dreams.

The close is opening ending.  Has Rick found a solution to his problem?

“Of Durians and Vipers” is a first rate short story, in just a few pages Biswas shows us years of a marriage, lets us get an inside look at a Durian Plantation, and skillfully develops her characters.

I hope to read more of the work of Damyanti Biswas. There are links to other stories on her website.

This story Is part of The Reading Life Short Stories by South Asian Women Project.  

Oleander Bousweau