The Story Game

March 11, 2024
A ham-fisted framing device undercuts the occasional brilliance of Sundog Lit editor Tjoa’s debut. Locked in a mysterious room with her younger sister, Tjoa passes the time by telling six stories about herself, each one bringing her closer to unearthing a repressed traumatic secret. The richest of Tjoa’s tales—which appear as standalone autobiographical essays—interrogate subjects including racism and colonialism with piercing intellect. In “The Island Paradise,” the author recalls a family vacation in Bali, where she arrived “with the assumption that I am not like the other tourists” given that she “know all about this island’s colonial wounds,” then left feeling deep guilt about her “ability to leave this place... when the pleasure finally ran dry.” In “On Being in Love with a White Man,” Tjoa—an Indo-Chinese woman who grew up in Singapore—gleefully unpicks the dynamics of her interracial marriage to illustrate how “decoloniality can reside in the details of everyday life.” Unfortunately, these sections build toward a gimmicky reveal that, once delivered, feels strangely muted and blunts the emotional power of the entire project. Though it’s bolstered by gorgeous prose and lucid political thought, the parts of this misguided exercise far outweigh the whole. Agent: Allison Malecha, Trellis Literary.

April 1, 2024
A writer and editor searches for lost memories. In her sensitive debut memoir, Tjoa, a nonfiction editor at Sundog Lit, creates a narrative from conversations between Hui and her younger sister, Nin. As children, growing up in Singapore, Hui would tell Nin stories as they lay in the dark at bedtime. Now adults, Nin urges Hui to reprise the ritual, especially to tell her stories about the years that Hui claims not to remember, from the time she was 8 until she was around 16. Hui insists those memories are blank; instead, she tells Nin about visiting Bali, where their father was born, and where, on her two visits to the island, she was affronted by the "colonial wounds, the economic and ecological injustices of its present day." Not "in search of some putative paradise," she bristles at being thought of as just another rich tourist. However, Nin is not interested in Hui's political analyses, but rather in her feelings. Talking about her marriage to Thomas, a white German whom she met at university, Hui reveals nothing about Thomas as a person or about their relationship, but only about other people's assumptions "that I must study Thomas's world as a debutante studies poise: eager to improve, and wary of slip-ups. Girlishly hoping to emerge transformed. Whereas Thomas is thought to observe my world as a specialist might observe a shiny new colony of ants: with interest, but with no intention of ever evolving in its likeness or direction." As Hui relates other experiences--at an eco-hostel, in her marketing job, and in London, where she lives--Nin urges her to stop intellectualizing and dig deep into the reasons she often feels exploited, trapped, and depressed. Memory, loss, trauma, and powerlessness emerge as salient themes in this probing memoir. An intimate exploration of a woman's identity.

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May 1, 2024
"You've forgotten so much," the prologue warns. "About the past. About yourself." UK-based Singaporean writer Tjoa attempts to reconstruct that past, using the titular game, in which one sister, Hui, tells nightly stories in the dark to younger Nin. Tjoa's game becomes a framing device in this unusual memoir, in repeating chapters titled "Room," which encourage, sometimes demand, the memories that follow. These chapters also interrupt, distance, even deny the memories that gradually become more personal and intimate. Tjoa examines her half-Indonesian identity during a trip to Bali, she interrogates her marriage to a white man as a Southeast Asian woman, she considers variations of mental illness, she attempts sustainable living, she confronts her faith by volunteering at a Palestinian convent. Having cautiously, deliberately revealed defining moments of her adulthood, only then can she confront the traumas of her long-elided childhood. Tjoa's narrative is, initially, undoubtedly intriguing, but coy hesitations ("You'll see," "you know who," "you know how") make for stilted conversations that begin to dominate the "Room" chapters. That cleverness, alas, ultimately proves more distracting than affecting.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.