Spicy Sambal With Anchovies

I briefly mentioned Chua Kok Yee's new collection of short stories Without Anchovies the other day, and want to say more about it now. (I'm slow, I know...).

The last time I wrote about Kok Yee's writing was when News From Home was published, and I commented that he had a wonderfully quirky imagination but that his writing style needed to develop. I am frankly surprised (and very pleased) to see how far he has come in this short time. Here he writes the kind of clear, straightforward prose that allows the reader to ease right into a story, and his strong openings pull you into the story from the word go.

I'm a really jaded reader at the moment. I pick up fiction - get so far into it and toss it aside when it disappoints, but I enjoyed each and every one of these stories.  The best of them, I found fresh and surprising, and for that reason I'm not going to tell you too much about what happens in them.

The title piece Sambal without Anchovies, a well-told and moving story of family relationships, love and loss, and a family and nasi lemak business.
My favourite story of all was The Gift (which Kok Yee read at Seksan's last week) and I could have wept for the girl who scrimps and saves to buy her mother a gift ... only to have everything go most horribly wrong. Smoking Can Kill is extremely clever because here smoking does kill, but in the most bizarrely round-about way.

Kok Yee does horror very well - I loved Moving which was an unusual twist on the usual haunted house story, while An Untrue Love story has quite a conventional plot for a local horror story (remember - I grew up with New Thrill, Malaysia's trashy horror newspaper in the 1980's!) but works very well because of the unconventional voice of its narrator who fills in the gaps of what didn't happen with her alternative view of events. 

A Circus Interview was surreal and haunting, and reminded me of the stories of Etgar Keret.

I particularly enjoyed the stories where humour was blended with the horror Dead Cougar was a delight, and A Cemetery Story, a cheeky little take on the British Council's City Of Stories project, had me grinning.

Being able to create characters which are not only believable but who really intrigue us in so short a space is no mean feat. Mei who appears in both in Dinner and Cruel Mother is particularly well-realised and I'd be happy to spend more time in her company. The mother in Thieving Daughter is both demented and achingly lonely and we can't help but be fascinated by her. (It's actually quite strange that Kok Yee's female characters are often more convincing than the males!)

In some cases, I felt that while the concept of the story was simply excellent,  the execution could have been a rather better.

The outer frame of the story The Hippocratic Oath - the anesthetist in the operating theatre considering how she has the life of the patient in her hands - is very well realised with plenty of attention to detail, but the charcters in the inner story (the gangster and his wife) are comic-book stereotypes and we can't believe in them, or really feel his menace or her fear.

I wasn't terribly convinced by Embracing Your Shadow where a man is hanted by the memory of a woman he saw only once years before so that he is never able to make his marriage a success. It would actually be hard for any writer to make this seem possible, as we all know that in real life even the most physically appealing member of the opposite sex will generally cease to figure in our thoughts as soon as we move past them, and even the memories of old lovers fade in time. This woman does not seem to have much about her that distinguishes her from the mass for the reader, which makes the protagonist's obsession even harder to fathom.

There's a couple more things I'd like to pass on advice to Kok Yee (and other writers who might be reading this, of course!). Firstly beware of unnecessary POV shifts, as in Sambal Without Anchovies - there actually is no reason why the whole story couldn't have been told from a consistent viewpoint.  Secondly, there is no need to describe every character's physical appearance and clothes when we first encounter them - just select the one or two telling details that will make them stand out for us.  As readers we are perfectly capable of filling in the blanks when imagining our characters.

As for the production of the book, love the creamy paper and the cover fold-ins.  I'm not wild about the picture of the dead flowers which is greatly at odds with the title. (Mixed metaphors?) 

There are some proofreading errors in the book- many more than there should be - and predictably (because Malaysians always find these hard) the most problematic areas are: sequence of tenses (when to use past simple and when to use past prefect); and the confusion between will and would for real and unreal conditions.   But yes, I'm being picky as an ex-English teacher turned editor is, I think, allowed to be. The book needed another editing pass.

Kok Yee is a local writer very well-worth supporting and it will be really interesting to see his development. There are certainly plenty of anchovies in this spicy sambal.

More News from Home

This Saturday you can hear the three authors of News From Home talking about their writing at MPH 1 Utama. Click the poster for more details.

This event has apparently now been canceled as there was no-one to facilitate it ...

Happy Third Birthday, Readings!

Saturday marked the third anniversary of our first ever Readings, which has run more or less monthly since then, providing a much needed platform and meeting place for local writers.

Our first readers was Shih-Li Kow (and apologies for spelling her name wrong earlier) who read the title piece from News from Home, a collection of short fiction which showcases the work of three new writers published by Silverfish. It is a very enjoyable story which came over very well.

I've been wanting to get Tunku Halim ("Malaysia's Stephen King") to Readings for a long time, but he isn't in the country very often (he lives in Tasmania!) so I was really happy when he said he was back and could come along. He read a story called Blue Glass from his new collection Gravedigger's Kiss very spookily. (Though members of the audience commented afterwards that he isn't as scary in person as they thought he would be ...).

Bernice Chauly launched her new collection of poetry and prose The Book of Sins. It is so nice to see that pieces we've hear her read on other occasions have now been collected together and a whole work given shape.

Subverting the concept of the seven deadly sins, Bernice comes up with a list of her own (Pride, Greed, Wrath, War, Gluttony, Love, Betrayal and Lust) which becomes the organising principle for this intensely personal book, which ends with her poems about her mother's death and forgiveness.

During the break it was time to get down to the business of celebrating our birthday with a chocolate cake. Bernice and I blew out the candles, made wishes, and cut the chocolate cake.

Is this a party, or what??

Poor Chua Kok Yee got to read with a big red stain on his shirt. No, Tunku Halim hadn't stabbed him. He had been attacked by a wine bottle while bravely struggling with a recalcitrant cork!

He took the presence of the large picture of piggies on the other wall as an omen that he should read his short story about three little pigs from News From Home - a funny and clever piece.

Chuah Guat Eng was once upon a time my writing teacher and I am very grateful to her for her help and encouragment. Guat's first novel, Echoes of Silence was launched in 1994 and her poems, short stories and articles have appeared in many publications. She has also recently finished her PhD.

Today she was launching her new collection of short fiction, The Old House & Other Stories and she read three extracts connected with the theme of how we use of language which gave us an excellent taster of the book.

Last up was journalist Gerald Chuah whom I first met when we were both doing a telephone interview with self-help guru, Jack Canfield. (He came along prepared and I benefited!) Gerald's book In the Eye of the Tiger:Survival Principles from Sylvester Stallone's Life and Films is pretty unique, and I think Rehman Rashid describes it best:

It is the uber-fanzine ... the product of an obsession that might be certifiable were it not channelled and refined into this ageless document ... genre-defying ... he’s penetrated the vacuity of Hollywood to tap the heart within.

Gerald still seems overwhelmed by the fact that he managed to achieve his dream and write the book. (And it is a beautifully produced book too.)

My thanks to Seksan for the beautiful space. To all who read and all who came. To my friends who set things up and cleared up so well.

Postscript:

BP has an excellent write-up here, and Ted has great photos too.

Goodish News From Home

So now we come back to Mr. Raman's little experiment. Remember the outcry when he decided announced the death of the Silverfish New Writing series citing the fact that:

... it did not bring to the surface the multitudes of Malaysian writers presumed to be hiding in the woodwork

He announced his intention to start a new project, fostering a small number of voices through his writing programme, and then publishing the work of those who managed to demonstrate the kind of talent and staying power he was looking for.

News From Home is the first fruit of the venture. He says in the introduction:

... we* recognise that, in the absence of literary agents in this country, it is not enough to simply invite submissions and sit back and wait. Publishers need to do more, to guide and train as well.

Now this is a noble aim. It used to happen (but not longer!) that publishers in the UK (and perhaps too elsewhere) took a risk on authors they felt had potential, and nurtured them, even if their early efforts were less than wonderful. It's probably something that we need to happen rather more here where the talent pool is not so big, where there is a willingness to publish and a growing readership - but not enough local voices of quality.

So for putting the effort and commitment into this, Mr. Raman, well done.

I am loathe to say anything too critical about beginning writers, knowing how easily they bruise, so hope that I err on the side of kindness. But the proof of the pudding is, as they say, in the eating ... so how does the book taste?

It's actually a meal in three courses and each of the three selected authors has contributed ten stories to form a book within a book.

Let's take them in the order in which they appear.

I wasn't very far into Chuah Kok Yee's (below) portion of the book, entitled My Grandpa's Funeral and Other Stories, when I suddenly felt an urge to grab the phone and call up Xeus to tell her that this is a writer she should be promoting, because he writes just the kind of dark side twisty tailed stories that she writes herself. And guess what? Kok Yee actually has a story published in Dark City 2 so I wasn't too far off the mark.

There is a market for fiction of this kind and Kok Yee may well have found his niche, though I hope he continues also to push himself beyond it.

I liked best his more surreal pieces. Where There Is A Will, which features a nagging treadmill (perhaps what I need to get into shape!), and will-power patches (perhaps what I need even more!). Three Little Pigs is a wonderfully cynical subversion of a children's fairy tale with C21st realities thrown in.

Some of his more conventional horror stories were pleasingly plotted and entertaining. I particularly liked Merdeka, and The Fox and the Dog.

Other pieces I felt were a somewhat weaker. I was disappointed with The L-Word on the Beach, which got yanked back abruptly to hetrosexual safety when it was clear that the story was really headed elsewhere. (Can't say more without posting a spoiler! But read it and tell me if you don't think I'm right!)

The title piece, My Grandpa's Funeral, I found a little too predictable and the tension could have been built up rather more with perhaps the mourners talking rather more about the dead man to create a greater sense of intrigue . I didn't "get" The Crime Adventure of Mr Shrill and Mr. Gutteral, but maybe that's just me being dense. The one-page story Magic Mirror seems to me more of a filler than a valid story in tis own right.

To answer Raman's question about Kok Yee:

Is he out own Murakami?

I'd say that sometimes he certainly has the requisite quirkiness, but his writing style needs to develop. And how else can a writer do that but by reading, reading, reading?

Kok Yee also designed the very nice cover with it's very Malaysian tea-cup and old photos.

Shi-Li Kow's (above) Peach Blossom Luck and other stories form the central section of the book and left me hungry for much much more from this writer.

The title piece is very well narrated, it is a story with a twist - and one that makes you genuinely gasp because it is so subtly introduced.

But for me the main strength of these stories is that all the characters - even those not within the immediate frame are satisfyingly fleshed out. That is no mean feat in the tight space of a short story. There is also a very pleasing flow to Shi-Li's writing: she is entirely comfortable with the language.

Baby is beautifully written, and as with so many of these pieces left me wishing that this was the first chapter of a novel rather than a four-page short.

Pak Hassan's Story has an old fisherman keeping a group of rebellious youngsters amused with an intriguing Malaysian fairy tale ... but is it really all fantasy? I loved the way the frame effortlessly became part of the story.

I appreciated the humour of A Job to Love, a piece that borders on sci-fi and set in an entertainment complex of the future. I chuckled over the story which gives the whole collection it's title News From Home, particularly as the voice of the narrator is so well captured.

But most of all, I enjoyed Seeking Frangipani, which is a story that makes you pause for thought as the writer reminds us that sometimes seeking for something is more important than actually finding it.

Has Raman discovered the next big thing in Shi-Li? Maybe he has.

Rumaizah Abu Bakar (above) seems to me (as yet) a less confident writer than the other two, and I wonder if she was hurried into print because it seems to me that some of the pieces had real promise but didn't seem to have yet "arrived". (She has been working with Raman for a much shorter time than the others.)

Her biggest strength is in being able to create convincing settings for her stories. I like the hotel setting of a couple of them, and I'm sure that Rumaizah is drawing on inside knowledge of the hotel industry. (She was at one point a hotelier.) Chestnut Chocolate Mooncake which explores the seamier side of an international cookery competition was my favourite story, though I feel a bit cheated that we didn't see more of Chef Chen's struggle with his conscience. Room Service is also interesting for its behind the scene peep of hotel life, but the twisty ending was so obvious even from page one that this reader discounted it!

The 50Sen Queens I also very much liked for its exposé of school politics, and I really would have liked more of this. The newspaper office setting of Tomorrow's Headline is also well done, although the story didn't convince.

Rumaizah is not afraid to experiment and tells one story (Swimming Elephants in Harbarana) from the animal's point of you, which is a brave move, even if it does not entirely come off; and from the point of view of Pepper Shaker and Kitchen Knife in her quirky short A Peppery Affair, which I enjoyed, and would have liked to have read more of.

My advice - Rumaizah is a writer who should just still keep going, build on her strengths, keep reading and keep learning ... because she certainly has potential, and because there is a market locally for fiction.

Raman has done a good job of giving these writers their first leg-up, even if we will still miss the New Writing anthologies.

Typos there are in this book - not a lot, but some. But what I found an annoyance throughout (and this is probably the English teacher in me speaking) was the underuse of the past perfect tense, and the persistent use of time expressions like "ago" and "yesterday" which should have been backshifted in past tense narrative ("previously", "the day before"). All fiction writers (and editors) need to master these grammar points. (Says the pedant.)

Shall I slip in a grammar lesson another day??

* Am intrigued. Who is this "we"??