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A review by anatomier
Impractical Uses of Cake by Yeoh Jo-Ann
4.0
“The older I am, the more I regret the distances untravelled. And the boundaries I let people convince me were there.”
There’s something romantic about returning to an old place - be it your JC or even a place like Chinatown. The latter is where Sukhin, a thirty-five year old teacher, finds himself confronting memories he thought he had left behind in the former. For me, the heart of the novel is memory. It asks existential questions about modernity and living in Singapore in a way that doesn’t demand answers. Instead, we can gently fold them away to be taken out at a better time. After all, that’s what we Singaporeans do best right? Stay in our boxes and prepare for rainy days? In addition to the metaphor of boxes, I liked the one about food too - especially cake. When I tell people I don’t like cake, what I really mean is that I don’t like that cloying quality of cream sticking to my throat. But if you’re talking about chiffon, you’ve got me - and that is how I would describe this novel: light enough, with an even distribution of air bubbles, flavourful but a little sweet on the side. I’ll need more to resurface from the bottom of the sea.
There’s something romantic about returning to an old place - be it your JC or even a place like Chinatown. The latter is where Sukhin, a thirty-five year old teacher, finds himself confronting memories he thought he had left behind in the former. For me, the heart of the novel is memory. It asks existential questions about modernity and living in Singapore in a way that doesn’t demand answers. Instead, we can gently fold them away to be taken out at a better time. After all, that’s what we Singaporeans do best right? Stay in our boxes and prepare for rainy days? In addition to the metaphor of boxes, I liked the one about food too - especially cake. When I tell people I don’t like cake, what I really mean is that I don’t like that cloying quality of cream sticking to my throat. But if you’re talking about chiffon, you’ve got me - and that is how I would describe this novel: light enough, with an even distribution of air bubbles, flavourful but a little sweet on the side. I’ll need more to resurface from the bottom of the sea.