Singapore and Maldive Reading

I'm able to find a nice variety of historical and contemporary fiction using Singapore as the setting.  

A good book (not great, but good)

I start with A Different Sky by Meira Chand.  This is an historical fiction covering the time period from the 1920s through World War II and into the 1950s.  The plot follows several main characters throughout their lives; they start out as a rich Chinese girl, a Eurasian boy and an Indian teenager.  It does an excellent job portraying the events that occur in Singapore during that time period and depicting the different ethnic groups that make up the people of Singapore today.  Additionally you learn little factoids that you may not have been aware of previously - such as by law, Eurasians were limited to the jobs they could perform (similar to South Africa - where skin color was listed as part of the job description) or how communism almost took over Singapore.  She writes well and I like the book, but I don't love it.  I definitely recommend it to anyone visiting/living in Singapore.

Sorry - didn't read this one!

I originally miss that A Different Sky includes WWII as part of its timeline, so I purchase Under the Pong Pong Tree to educate myself about Singapore for those years.  However, I only read a few pages before I decide it isn't worth my time.  I feel the writing is a little stilted, especially the dialogue.  Since this covers something I've already read about (a Chinese girl in Singapore during the Japanese occupation) I decide to pass on it.  The ten readers who left reviews for it on Amazon give it 4.5 stars, so maybe it gets better as it goes along.

On the more serious side....

My next novel starts out in Singapore in the 1970s. (My selections completely skip how Singapore got its independence from Great Britain in 1963 and got "kicked out" of Malaysia in 1965.  I have to go to Wikipedia to find out about those events....When A Different Sky ends you can see the break from the UK beginning, though it still takes longer than I thought it would for them to become autonomous.)  This follows a Punjabi Sikh family from the 1970s until 1990.  It's difficult to get into at first, because the people are hard to form a connection with (there is some mental illness and depression in everyone, so they don't make the most pleasant companions).  I couldn't drop two books in a row though, so I stick with it, and I'm glad I did.   As the description states, this is a story of family, identity and belonging set against the backdrop of a city-state developing from a swamp to a glittering, modern metropolis.

During our visit to Singapore I found it fascinating to see the citizens still sound unhappy with the decisions the government made and the amount of control it has over everyday activities (Without any prompting from me - these conversations always came out of the "How do you like Singapore?" questions we're asked.)  These are the same things the characters in Inheritance have issues with...and yet they're still in effect almost 40 years later.  One of the interesting minutia I learn while in Singapore is the number of citizens are going down, but the population is rising slightly because they're adding a large number of permanent residents (our friends who recently moved there are classified as permanent residents).   Anyway, it'll be interesting to see in the future if the state continues to hold so much power over the people there.

...on the more jovial side.

My final Singapore selection is a light, modern day bestseller - Crazy Rich Asians.  This is an amusing, chick lit tale (with footnotes).  The main part of the narrative focuses on an ABC woman (American Born Chinese) in her late 20's who agrees to accompany her boyfriend to his best friend's wedding in Singapore.  They live in the US, so it's not until they arrive that she realizes her boyfriend's actually a member of one of the wealthiest, most prestigious families in Singapore.  Different chapters focus on other viewpoints (friends, cousins, parents, etc), so you hear everyone's thoughts and opinions (there's a lot of opinions)...but it's all campy, soap opera-type fun.  Perfect for a breezy vacation read, I decide to go ahead and buy the next two in the series.  They expand a bit more on some of the characters (and I think some change beyond what is believable, but like I said, soap opera level developments).   After I finished them I learn Crazy Rich Asians is being made into a movie...so if you don't read it, you may be able to watch it, soon.

Book #2

Book #3

What's fun about Kevin Kwan's writing is what I learn about current culture (mostly in the footnotes).  Many times characters say "lah" and as his footnote explains, "Lah is a suffix that can be used at the end of any phrase for emphasis, but there's no good explanation for why people use it, lah."  On our last day in Singapore, our Uber driver says "lah" - the first time I actually hear someone say it.  She laughs at how excited I am about it.  And some of the mothers speak in Hokkien, which is the language our food tour guide uses with some of the vendors.  He's surprised I've heard of it, when I ask what language they're speaking.  And I discover where the term "helper" comes from - it's used in Tokyo to describe someone who cleans, or cooks, or takes care of the kids, etc.  Kwan's footnote states: In Asia, the new generation of ruling class are using the term "helper" to refer to the people their parents called "maids" and their grandparents called "servants."

Before our trip I hadn't found anything interesting set in the Maldives.  While we're there, On the Island pops up as a Daily Deal on Amazon.  The description on the website exclaims, "Two people stranded on an island struggle to survive—and slowly fall in love—in the runaway New York Times bestseller from the author of Covet."  So it's an adventure story, a bestseller, and it has a 4.5 star rating with over 2800 reviews.  But romance novels are always rated really high (people who like romances always give them high marks...same with Christian books, and most science fiction).  I'm also a little creeped out because the woman is hired to tutor a sixteen-year-old boy, and they're the two people trapped on the island, but I decide for $2 I'll try it.  It's better than I thought it might be (and they don't get involved until he's almost 19 - I didn't give anything away; you already knew it was going to happen).  Again, it's another perfect read for vacation (but maybe not if you're flying in a small plane).  And I learned some tricks for starting a fire!  It helps to have a shoelace.