Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By S.L. Lim, Transit Lounge, $29.99.
Revenge is one novel that will not be easily forgotten: it’s a story where a family favours the son over the daughter.
Lim injects a dramatic nuance to the frustrations of a talented daughter and vengeful sister in a fascinating narrative that ends in the most unexpected way.
The opening line drops with a declaration and a disquieting act of violence. “I’m the one who’s in charge around here.” The speaker is 14-year old boy Shan. Too shocked for tears, vision obscured by a tangle of hair, “having recently been airborne, propelled by the force of brotherly arms”. His 11-year-old sister Yannie is the one who is thrown.
Yannie endures unpredictable episodes of physical brutality at the hands of her brother, and verbal cruelty at the hands of her mother. Tenderness is lacking within this family who live in Malaysia. Her father is distant and cold. It’s an unkindness that begins to feel ordinary and harmless, a sort of abandonment of her sense of self — and the lived reality of so many children in Asia.
Shan attends university before making his fortune in Australia, while Yannie must find menial employment and care for her ageing parents. After her mother’s death, Yannie travels to Sydney to become enmeshed in her psychopathic brother’s new life, which she seeks to undermine from within.
This is a novel that rages against capitalism, hetero-supremacy, mothers, fathers, families. It’s about what happens when you want to succeed but are born in the wrong time and place.
Intent on going to university, Yannie works hard until her father tells her they cannot afford it. Later, her brother is admitted to Oxford, and they pay for him to go. They support the boy in the family. It is a misfortune to be born a female.
S. L. Lim, who was born in Singapore, has a way with language that’s both mesmerising and beguiling.
