Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family

by Tash Aw

We want the stranger to be one of our own, someone we can understand.

My grandfathers. Strangers lost on a pier.

You are speaking with a freedom I have never seen in you, telling me things about my grandfather, about yourself, incidents which even my mother will not be familiar with. It’s because you’re so close to Granny, she will say later, but in fact it is the opposite. You’re telling me these things because we have grown apart, and sometimes it’s easier to be intimate with a stranger.

Sometimes when I type love, my phone changes the word to live. Several times in my notes for this book, typed quickly on a bus or a train, I have the line Live, and be silent.