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A review by delight
Modern Myths by Clara Chow
5.0
"This lack of sentimentality about the old ways. The constant struggle to adapt; to survive. So, this is modern life."
Nothing is more exhausting than another "remix [of] familiar tales" in this age of deconstruction, reconstruction, modernization or whatever "-tion" of classical stories. But stamp "Clara Chow" on the cover and I'm off to spend my hard-earned money, off to revel in another world - simply because I've always loved her writing and imagination, expressed marvelously in Dream Storeys. Clara Chow is a masterful storyteller, with the ability to string contrasting words and ideas that would never be able to go well together if used by another writer. As compared to Dream Storeys, Chow's writing here is less dense and convoluted, scaled down to bare simplicity at times - something which increased my enjoyment of the stories and characters.
Another difference from her first collection of stories is the way the characters take precedence over the places and settings. Under her capable hands, the god and goddesses are imbued with a fuller characterization that doesn't render them as just 2-D character tropes ("right", "wrong", "hero/heroine", "tragic"). I've mentioned in my review of Dream Storeys that "[p]hysical bodies are often discarded, neglected or destroyed in the stories, leaving the physical building to house the soul of the characters." In Modern Myths, Chow seems to be doing the same; pinning the characters under the boulder of human struggles, imprisoning them in the modern city, in the wheel of fate. And yet, the soul is elevated beyond simplistic narratives, beyond derogatory labels, and "[t]o know the immense joy of sailing close to the sun, basking in its freedom, and living to tell the tale".
This is a theme that is more prominent in the second part of the book, "Mortals". I am not that familiar with classical Greek myths to pinpoint which story relates to which. But I get this feeling that maybe, the stories aren't taken from the myths at all; maybe Chow was making her own mythology of life in Singapore. And that is the beauty of this book - that "struggling makes the ... human divine" - and the beauty of short stories / flash fictions: focusing on the small moments, taking them out of the busyness of city living and transcending them into infinity (for lack of a better word). What happens when unofficial nostalgia is banned, and the government implants false memories in us, so that we can all have one standard collective history? What happens when we are forced to mate with someone who has the same PSLE aggregate score as you, or choose to work to death for six days of the week? We still yearn for love, companionship, understanding, and reconciliation; it is all these things that make us human and yet, eternal - especially when immortalized in Chow's writing.
"But, the moment passed, and he was bobbing again, furiously alive, determined to make it to some invisible shore."
Nothing is more exhausting than another "remix [of] familiar tales" in this age of deconstruction, reconstruction, modernization or whatever "-tion" of classical stories. But stamp "Clara Chow" on the cover and I'm off to spend my hard-earned money, off to revel in another world - simply because I've always loved her writing and imagination, expressed marvelously in Dream Storeys. Clara Chow is a masterful storyteller, with the ability to string contrasting words and ideas that would never be able to go well together if used by another writer. As compared to Dream Storeys, Chow's writing here is less dense and convoluted, scaled down to bare simplicity at times - something which increased my enjoyment of the stories and characters.
Another difference from her first collection of stories is the way the characters take precedence over the places and settings. Under her capable hands, the god and goddesses are imbued with a fuller characterization that doesn't render them as just 2-D character tropes ("right", "wrong", "hero/heroine", "tragic"). I've mentioned in my review of Dream Storeys that "[p]hysical bodies are often discarded, neglected or destroyed in the stories, leaving the physical building to house the soul of the characters." In Modern Myths, Chow seems to be doing the same; pinning the characters under the boulder of human struggles, imprisoning them in the modern city, in the wheel of fate. And yet, the soul is elevated beyond simplistic narratives, beyond derogatory labels, and "[t]o know the immense joy of sailing close to the sun, basking in its freedom, and living to tell the tale".
This is a theme that is more prominent in the second part of the book, "Mortals". I am not that familiar with classical Greek myths to pinpoint which story relates to which. But I get this feeling that maybe, the stories aren't taken from the myths at all; maybe Chow was making her own mythology of life in Singapore. And that is the beauty of this book - that "struggling makes the ... human divine" - and the beauty of short stories / flash fictions: focusing on the small moments, taking them out of the busyness of city living and transcending them into infinity (for lack of a better word). What happens when unofficial nostalgia is banned, and the government implants false memories in us, so that we can all have one standard collective history? What happens when we are forced to mate with someone who has the same PSLE aggregate score as you, or choose to work to death for six days of the week? We still yearn for love, companionship, understanding, and reconciliation; it is all these things that make us human and yet, eternal - especially when immortalized in Chow's writing.
"But, the moment passed, and he was bobbing again, furiously alive, determined to make it to some invisible shore."