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russlemania's review
3.0
Singapore Noir is a collection of fourteen short stories compiled by Akashic Books, as part of its internationally spanning noir series.
It was good fun romping through the shorts, many of which explore our country's hot button issues and speculate on notable crimes that sometimes make shocking headlines in an otherwise safe, sterile petri dish of an island. Many of these stories are rife with grisly murders, shocking scandals, plotting and betrayal. Very exemplary of the theme of the collection.
My personal gripe with most of the stories however, would be the exposition. I felt that while in the midst of including distinctive local flavour in their stories, many of the writers traded off the nuance in their writing for unwieldy chunks of political and social commentary, or fun facts about Singapore that don't really add much to the plot.
Perhaps it's a bit of a semantic thing, as Singapore is a bit of a melting pot of cultures, and thus some of the writers, in the effort to fulfill an obligation to a collection poised at an international audience, begin to sound a little heavy handed with their constant signposting and decoding of Singaporean colloquialisms.
That being said, it was an enjoyable collection, and brings a refreshing dark twist to our sunny little island.
My personal favourites include:
Last Time by Colin Goh
Detective in a City with No Crime by Simon Tay
Smile Singapore by Colin Cheong
Current Escape by Johann S. Lee
It was good fun romping through the shorts, many of which explore our country's hot button issues and speculate on notable crimes that sometimes make shocking headlines in an otherwise safe, sterile petri dish of an island. Many of these stories are rife with grisly murders, shocking scandals, plotting and betrayal. Very exemplary of the theme of the collection.
My personal gripe with most of the stories however, would be the exposition. I felt that while in the midst of including distinctive local flavour in their stories, many of the writers traded off the nuance in their writing for unwieldy chunks of political and social commentary, or fun facts about Singapore that don't really add much to the plot.
Perhaps it's a bit of a semantic thing, as Singapore is a bit of a melting pot of cultures, and thus some of the writers, in the effort to fulfill an obligation to a collection poised at an international audience, begin to sound a little heavy handed with their constant signposting and decoding of Singaporean colloquialisms.
That being said, it was an enjoyable collection, and brings a refreshing dark twist to our sunny little island.
My personal favourites include:
Last Time by Colin Goh
Detective in a City with No Crime by Simon Tay
Smile Singapore by Colin Cheong
Current Escape by Johann S. Lee
moki's review
1.0
Ugh. I really wanted to like this, because I love noir and I feel like non-Western noir perspectives are super interesting... but I didn't sign up for what a lot of the stories offered: misogyny with a side of noir. Unfortunately, none of the stories were spectacularly written; they ranged from decent to bad. Overall, disappointing.
siria's review
2.0
This was a disappointment. Several of the stories in Singapore Noir were pretty bad, and none of them struck me as being especially good. Writing a good short story is a difficult thing—you have to compress a whole world—its people, thoughts, events—down into a few thousand words. It's a skill that takes time to hone, and unfortunately most of these stories read like first drafts of things that students would hand in at a writing workshop. And for several of the authors, it seems, "noir" is a synonym for "misogyny"—or maybe it's just gritty to read about male protagonists ejaculating on women's faces? I would have far preferred more stories with female protagonists, as opposed to objects to whom things happened.
books_n_pickles's review
3.0
Picked this up at the Brooklyn Book Festival--why this was hanging out with all the kids' books, I have no idea. I've never read noir before, so I figured that short stories were a good way to cut my teeth, even if a couple people scoffed at the idea that noir stories could be set in a city as clean and outwardly respectable as Singapore. (I would argue that makes it an excellent setting.)
My chief complaint, I'm afraid, is probably traditional to the genre and can't be avoided in most cases: that's that, even though this collection did manage to include women writers (5 out of 14), there wasn't a single story with a female protagonist until Part III--though I actually had thought the first story was told from a woman's perspective until about two pages from the end, when another character cemented the lead's gender. Honestly, it would have been more interesting if left ambiguous. In any case, the lack of women or people of other genders was so pronounced that the first story with a female lead was jarring. There are only four stories with women narrators/over-the-shoulders (possibly three--"Spells" is a bit unclear, though I decided there were few enough women to put this in one in their camp).
You know what? Forget tradition. It's just plain lazy not to branch out in this day and age!
It was interesting to read these stories, so on the opposite side of what I saw from my reasonably sunny, short-sighted 5-to-8-year-old perspective. Obviously this is a side of Singapore that I was completely oblivious to, and probably not one that I'll see in a few weeks, since we'll probably stick to touristy areas and sites of nostalgia. But it was fun to read stories set in a place that I knew a long time ago and will be visiting again soon.
Favorite Stories:
"Kena Sai" - S.J. Rozan
Part social commentary, really--a young father falls in love with his son and Singapore just as he falls out of love with his restless, self-absorbed wife, and finds himself in a tight spot when she's ready to move on to the next thing--with child, but not ex-husband, in tow.
"Mei Kwei, I Love You" - Suchen Christine Lim
The first story featuring a woman main character, and a queer one at that. (Don't believe the character was specifically identified as a lesbian, so I'll leave it open.) I also loved the perspectives on religion and privilege--there was really a lot squeezed into this one story!
"Bedok Reservoir" - Dave Chua
A tad predictable, but I'd been waiting so long to get to a story told from a maid's perspective (and a second story clearly from the perspective of a woman) that this horrifying little revenge fantasy was like water in a desert.
"Murder on Orchard Road" - Nury Vittachi
I heartily approve of editor Tan's decision to end on a relatively lighthearted note, with this story
I liked "Reel" until the end--I saw the plot twit coming, but it wasn't explained at all (p94). The killer had no discernible motive, which was extremely strange given how heavily it was implied that they'd deliberately set out to do something heinous.
It seemed a bit as though Part I was stocked up with the heavy, truly dark stuff, with "Kena Sai" the first relative light in the tunnel. Part I was so heavy and adult that I worry sensitive readers might not make it to the lighter fare later on--I'm a voracious reader of fanfiction, but getting shoved into the brooding male sex fantasy of "Detective In a City with No Crime" was about as comfortable as a swim in the Arctic Ocean. Yes, yes, argue that it's par for the course all you want, but the aforementioned fanfiction seems to be making me a dark literature snob.
Quotes
35 - True, the state is a nanny and the bureaucracy does not know how to let a person live without rules, and so they reduce life to a schedule of permits and licenses to be applied and paid for. The have allowed seediness and confined it to certain quarters. The upper class are garrisoned with their respectability in other areas, all with rising real estate values.
Snerk. Perfect setting for a distopia. I'm waiting for the next round of distopian teen fiction set in a place where you start out on the sunny side--Hunger Games from the perspective of Capital City, or something. Not that that's related to noir, really, but I just really like this vision of "seediness confined to certain quarters."
66 - All white men looked the same to him.
I applaud this sentence for existing.
165 - I just found the end of this story very poignant. Here's Cha-Li trying to shoehorn the future she wanted into the present she was given, and it's definitely not going to work. She's still focused on her picture, not the big picture: defining what might happen in terms relative to herself rather than others.
212 - Like Natalia, she had wanted a better life. It was true that sometimes Natalia also considered suicide, but she knew she had to press on. If she died, her debts would simply be passed on to her family.
219 - I loved how the two main women in this story shared a kind of solidarity even though they'd never met.
237 - There was a certain Zen quality about the paradox that would give the race a uniquely Asian flavor.
Quoting the whole paragraph will spoil the ending, but I was delighted with the clever solution to an outlandish problem.
My chief complaint, I'm afraid, is probably traditional to the genre and can't be avoided in most cases: that's that, even though this collection did manage to include women writers (5 out of 14), there wasn't a single story with a female protagonist until Part III--though I actually had thought the first story was told from a woman's perspective until about two pages from the end, when another character cemented the lead's gender. Honestly, it would have been more interesting if left ambiguous. In any case, the lack of women or people of other genders was so pronounced that the first story with a female lead was jarring. There are only four stories with women narrators/over-the-shoulders (possibly three--"Spells" is a bit unclear, though I decided there were few enough women to put this in one in their camp).
You know what? Forget tradition. It's just plain lazy not to branch out in this day and age!
It was interesting to read these stories, so on the opposite side of what I saw from my reasonably sunny, short-sighted 5-to-8-year-old perspective. Obviously this is a side of Singapore that I was completely oblivious to, and probably not one that I'll see in a few weeks, since we'll probably stick to touristy areas and sites of nostalgia. But it was fun to read stories set in a place that I knew a long time ago and will be visiting again soon.
Favorite Stories:
"Kena Sai" - S.J. Rozan
Part social commentary, really--a young father falls in love with his son and Singapore just as he falls out of love with his restless, self-absorbed wife, and finds himself in a tight spot when she's ready to move on to the next thing--with child, but not ex-husband, in tow.
"Mei Kwei, I Love You" - Suchen Christine Lim
The first story featuring a woman main character, and a queer one at that. (Don't believe the character was specifically identified as a lesbian, so I'll leave it open.) I also loved the perspectives on religion and privilege--there was really a lot squeezed into this one story!
"Bedok Reservoir" - Dave Chua
A tad predictable, but I'd been waiting so long to get to a story told from a maid's perspective (and a second story clearly from the perspective of a woman) that this horrifying little revenge fantasy was like water in a desert.
"Murder on Orchard Road" - Nury Vittachi
I heartily approve of editor Tan's decision to end on a relatively lighthearted note, with this story
I liked "Reel" until the end--I saw the plot twit coming, but it wasn't explained at all (p94). The killer had no discernible motive, which was extremely strange given how heavily it was implied that they'd deliberately set out to do something heinous.
It seemed a bit as though Part I was stocked up with the heavy, truly dark stuff, with "Kena Sai" the first relative light in the tunnel. Part I was so heavy and adult that I worry sensitive readers might not make it to the lighter fare later on--I'm a voracious reader of fanfiction, but getting shoved into the brooding male sex fantasy of "Detective In a City with No Crime" was about as comfortable as a swim in the Arctic Ocean. Yes, yes, argue that it's par for the course all you want, but the aforementioned fanfiction seems to be making me a dark literature snob.
Quotes
35 - True, the state is a nanny and the bureaucracy does not know how to let a person live without rules, and so they reduce life to a schedule of permits and licenses to be applied and paid for. The have allowed seediness and confined it to certain quarters. The upper class are garrisoned with their respectability in other areas, all with rising real estate values.
Snerk. Perfect setting for a distopia. I'm waiting for the next round of distopian teen fiction set in a place where you start out on the sunny side--Hunger Games from the perspective of Capital City, or something. Not that that's related to noir, really, but I just really like this vision of "seediness confined to certain quarters."
66 - All white men looked the same to him.
I applaud this sentence for existing.
165 - I just found the end of this story very poignant. Here's Cha-Li trying to shoehorn the future she wanted into the present she was given, and it's definitely not going to work. She's still focused on her picture, not the big picture: defining what might happen in terms relative to herself rather than others.
212 - Like Natalia, she had wanted a better life. It was true that sometimes Natalia also considered suicide, but she knew she had to press on. If she died, her debts would simply be passed on to her family.
219 - I loved how the two main women in this story shared a kind of solidarity even though they'd never met.
237 - There was a certain Zen quality about the paradox that would give the race a uniquely Asian flavor.
Quoting the whole paragraph will spoil the ending, but I was delighted with the clever solution to an outlandish problem.
dgrachel's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
This has to be one of my favorite Akashic Noir collections so far. There was only one short story that I didn’t like. While the ending on a couple of others left me scratching my head, the stories themselves were evocative and enchanting. The sense of place m, the variety of characters and stories, all combined to make a rich collection of dark tales.
apollosmichioreads's review
3.0
A collection of noir stories set in Singapore that sadly feels unrealistic and fails to leave any lasting impression. Mediocre on average, it is hard to find any of the stories truly exciting.
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