Shadow Theatre

by Fiona Cheong

"Unwed and pregnant, Shakilah Nair has just returned to Singapore after fifteen years in America. The women of the neighborhood and all her old acquaintances revel in their gossip, airing speculations that are dark and wondrously imagined." They are Straits Chinese, Indian, Malay, or a combination, and their world - contemporary Singapore - is populated by an array of spirits, seen and unseen: ghosts, vampires, and other phantoms of the shadows. Their actions are circumscribed by the spirits' powers; their comfort comes equally from the Catholic church and from the local witch doctor. The questions they feel impelled to resolve are the identity of the mysterious diamond woman, who is said to have used a magic potion on her husband, and the reason for Shakilah's return.

Genres: Fiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Fiona Cheong holds a BA in English and MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. She is an Associate Professor of English and the author of two novels, The Scent of the Gods (W.W. Norton 1991), which was nominated for a National Book Award, and Shadow Theatre (Soho 2002), described in The Women’s Review of Books as a “lush, stylistically inventive novel” and “subtly subversive work.” Her shorter work is featured in Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Literature (ed. Jessica Hagedorn, Viking 1993) and Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing (ed. Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Cheng-Lok Chua, New Rivers 2000). She has taught at Howard and Cornell Universities and at the Hurston-Wright Writers Workshop, and has been a judge for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the Massachusetts Council for the Arts Awards. She has received numerous grants for her teaching and writing, including an Innovation in Education Award from the University of Pittsburgh’s Provost Office (2006), an artist’s fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts (2007) and a Make It Your Own Award from the Case Foundation (2008) for her civic engagement project, Re-Imagining Our City. She is a co-founder of the Asian American Writers Forum at the University of Pittsburgh and of its current manifestation, The Writers of Color Workshop. She is working on the final segment of her trilogy of novels set in Singapore, and on a book about teaching and writing.

(from http://www.writing.pitt.edu/people/fa...)

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complex story with many plot lines to follow. It was engrossing to read and try to predict how everything would tie together, and I loved how unique each character was. The intermingling of spirits and folk lore was a good addition and there is for sure deep meaning that I'm missing in all the small, complex interactions. The ending was very satisfying and I didn't see it coming.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 3 out of 5]

[This novel is being read for Compass Journey Page.]

Poetic, sensual, elusive, sad, sensory, resigned, playful. I'm not sure I got everything that was going on in this novel. Perhaps I wasn't meant to. Perhaps it would be impossible among so many interweaved streams.

Perhaps I read it too slowly, thus losing momentum. I got quite lost in it (in both negative and positive senses of the word), but I don't really know what I've come away with.

Full review to follow shortly on Compass Journey Page.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complex story from multiple characters, I'm still sorting them all out. I am mesmerized by the magic, the ghosts. This book takes us to just the middle of the psychology of three generations of women--I find myself wondering what else lies below in the places we haven gone to yet. There is sorrow but also joy and peace, I think. And Singapore seems amazing!

[Adar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it, it sums up how Singapore's community is like or at least was like. Peeling off the layers of the different people holding different statue of the society. Quietly but beautifully revealing to the readers about what goes on behind a shadow theatre (wayang kulit) when the play is up.

[Ming]

DNF'd. After reading 142 pages of this book, I do not want to read any more. I plainly just don't care what happens. I tried picking it up a few times to proceed but it's like spinning wheels. And there seems to be a lot of handwringing by a lot of different characters. Too many hands and too many characters. And that mystery?....eh. Leave it at that.