A review by misspalah
Memories of Chin Swee Road by Mark Tan

hopeful informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

3.5

Ours was one of only four or five houses along Chin Swee Road that were occupied by a single three-gener-ation family (plus, later, one small tenant family). At its most crowded, there were never more than fifteen or sixteen people living in this house. The other fifty to sixty houses along the road were crowded with multiple partitioned rooms rented out and over-tenanted, often by five to ten separate families. It was a well-built, finely detailed house, more than adequately furnished by my grandfather and kept clean by my aunt and mother. We children helped, occasionally. Other than the occasional roof leak I do not remember having seen any major or minor repairs done to the house.

• Upstairs Chapter : Memories of Chin Swee Road by Mark Tan

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This was 3.5 / 5 actually - i enjoyed his writing - its sort of a mixture of his childhood memories, the depiction of how his hometown used to look like, the reminiscent of growing up - his maternal and paternal grandparents, his father’s habit and the eventual part where they were forced to move out to make way for the urban project. I may not recall every single characters but i do remember how his father’s fondness of fighting fishes, how his grandparents bought their first son and raised him in the household although later they lost contact with the family after they left Indonesia and the complicated process of making glutinous rice by the author. I also love that there’s a sketches in between pages of all the things that described by the author - the house plan, the neighborhoods, the festivals that were celebrated nearby the area. There are also some pages which author inserted pictures of him and his own mother. Judging from this book alone, i would say that the author grew up in a comfortable and cozy lifestyle. His family were richer than others in the neighborhood. His childhood was a happy and playful one although he did mention that his father and grandfather were absent for the most part of his life. I guess this book was written to reconnect back what was lost while growing up and reaffirm the sense of belonging to his homeland.