My two cents on two local books I mentioned before:
Jason Hahn's Asking for Trouble and Walter Woon's The Advocate's Devil (sorry about the illegible font colours from the old template).
If you just look at the covers and titles, you wouldn't naturally put the two books together but strangely, they turned out to have some rather broad similarities. In both, the protagonists, Hahn himself in his book and fictitious Dennis Chiang in Woon’s book, are overseas-educated lawyers who return to Singapore to work. In the course of their work and returning to a familiar yet strange homeland, they both grapple with their identities and their new lives.
Beyond that, of course, the two books are vastly different. Well, both are humorous, but Hahn’s is a light-hearted collection of episodes in his life while Woon’s is a novel.
Let me first deal quickly with Asking for Trouble. Some of you will remember reading these funny stories about Amanda and Saffy in 8 Days years ago. Well, Hahn was the author of those and this book is a compilation of stories about how he and the girls became housemates (they were colleagues) and some of their 'adventures' living together. As can be expected, it's light reading, fun, and, well, 'cute'. The type of thing you might enjoy while lazing on the beach.
So Woon’s, being a novel, is of course more substantial. If anyone were to ask me for recommendations for local lit books for schools (which I’m sure they won’t), I would recommend his. I think even secondary school students can enjoy and appreciate his book: adventure, mystery, suspense, romance, humour. What more, this book can kill several birds at one go, too – there’s history (set during the colonial era, and includes themes such as immigration, social divisions, etc), there's NE (Chiang comes from a peranakan family and there are characters from all races you would want to talk about), and there's even Moral Education (family and friends feature very strongly). Literature-wise, the characterisation, themes, literary techniques, etc are all interesting.
I suspect, though, that some people might find his work contrived but, well, to each his own, ya? I enjoyed the exciting twists and turns and I liked how history was woven into the story, in the odd sentence here and there, such as:
'My father's grandfather came to the Straits Settlements shortly after Raffles had conned the Sultan of Johor into ceding Singapore to the British'
(Way to go, Mr Woon! So teachers and students can go into a real discussion about the whole founding of Singapore business),
and more drawn-out themes such as the slowly-declining peranakan culture (with constant references to Dennis' family, his cousin's watered-down 'traditional' wedding, etc) and the pro-China movement (he liked this girl who was pro-China and he inadvertently ended up at a labour demonstration because of her).
One thing, though. Dennis is a lawyer and each of these chapters is supposed to be a 'case'. However, Dennis seems to me more of an investigator or detective than a lawyer. Well, you have to suspend your disbelief, I guess.
But still, an entertaining and engaging read.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Completely unrelated, of course, but congratulations to Zheng Jie and Yan Zi, whose names none of the commentators who sometimes speak rather patronisingly about them can pronounce properly, on becoming Wimbledon champions! Way to go, Asians!
(picture from Wimbledon site)
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