"My Lipstick Is Red, Darling”, from Eka Kurniawan’s new collection of short stories, Kitchen Curse, begins with a woman’s arrest at a brothel. She tells the police she is merely a housewife, not a prostitute, but her husband asks for a divorce when she finally gets home. The pages that follow delve … [Read more...]
Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan
January 26, 2020 by
What is it about? Japanese student heads to desolate town to find out what happened to his sister after she was violently stabbed to death. OK, but what is it really about? Ren Ishida, a student from Tokyo, travels to the (fictional) town of Akakawa. It was here that his elder sister Keiko … [Read more...]
The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao
January 25, 2020 by
Thrillers have often held a close and vital relationship with family drama. Take the recent Rian Johnson film Knives Out, for instance, where we have an Agatha Christie-esque whodunnit set in an old family home. It’s a film which relies entirely on the cracked and broken family dynamic to carry its … [Read more...]
Tiffany Tsao’s psychological thriller with a twist
January 25, 2020 by
This thriller begins with a rather lurid hook - a mass poisoning at a birthday banquet in which 300 people die. The only survivor is our narrator, Gwendolyn: left trapped in an unresponsive body, she has little to do but ponder what drove her sister Estella to commit mass murder and suicide. The … [Read more...]
‘The Majesties’ Is Disturbing, Yet Shockingly Enjoyable
January 25, 2020 by
It's pretty clear why Tiffany Tsao's The Majesties has been compared to the smash hit Crazy Rich Asians. After all, both are about obscenely wealthy Chinese families. But once I started reading, it became clear that this is a very different story — if Crazy Rich Asians was all about the luster and … [Read more...]