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A review by tinycl0ud
Moth Stories by Leonora Liow
5.0
Liow writes all-encompassingly, her stories taking you back in time to the previous decade, the previous century, and occasionally even further. The details that furnish the stories are so realistic this book should qualify as historical fiction, yet it was so elegantly done and had none of the regular clunky, “Look how much research I did!” ways of writing about a past Singapore that others do. There is just enough to transport you back, no less and no more.
I really appreciate the economy in her short stories. To call them “short” feels somewhat inaccurate because each story is so full and so rich that reading a few at once can be overwhelming. I needed some time to digest each story. And then when you look back you marvel at how it was only a handful of pages because it felt like much more.
Her characters are impossible not to feel for—regardless of race or religion, you are made keenly aware at all moments that they are painfully and devastatingly human. Liow is not interested in creating clear-cut victims and villains, but the social critique nevertheless shines through without being shouty. She subtly constructs layers of marginality that problematise binarist ways of reading her stories.
Her characters may strive against their bonds, but you know it is futile because these are not fairytales, and there are no happy endings in store. The heavy focus on the passage of time, as indicated in the frequent use of the flashback and the the unstable slippery way in which their minds oscillate between the past and the present, is an accurate attempt at portraying how we actually experience time ourselves—not in neatly labelled and chronologically arranged pockets, but a soupy mess with the days blended into one another and our emotions colouring our memories of them.
I really appreciate the economy in her short stories. To call them “short” feels somewhat inaccurate because each story is so full and so rich that reading a few at once can be overwhelming. I needed some time to digest each story. And then when you look back you marvel at how it was only a handful of pages because it felt like much more.
Her characters are impossible not to feel for—regardless of race or religion, you are made keenly aware at all moments that they are painfully and devastatingly human. Liow is not interested in creating clear-cut victims and villains, but the social critique nevertheless shines through without being shouty. She subtly constructs layers of marginality that problematise binarist ways of reading her stories.
Her characters may strive against their bonds, but you know it is futile because these are not fairytales, and there are no happy endings in store. The heavy focus on the passage of time, as indicated in the frequent use of the flashback and the the unstable slippery way in which their minds oscillate between the past and the present, is an accurate attempt at portraying how we actually experience time ourselves—not in neatly labelled and chronologically arranged pockets, but a soupy mess with the days blended into one another and our emotions colouring our memories of them.