I have a suspicion that by now, I may have built a reputation of tearing apart Malaysian-English works. Oh, well.
Moving on.
"The Female Cell" is a collection of short works by Kedah-born Rumaizah Abu Bakar, published by Silverfish Books in 2011. Do note that I use 'works' instead of 'stories'. But I'll get to that later. Like usual, I'll talk about the cover first.
This book suffers from the same ailment other Silverfish titles seem to be afflicted with. I mean, the "Silverfish New Writing" titles had superb covers, but others are merely meh if not outright ugly. I love the high-grade brown paper between the covers, though, and the scent is just right.
The book itself is divided into two parts: Love, Lies and Lives, and Travel Tales. In the description, the first part consists of works of fiction. Short stories, in fact.
I beg to differ.
The book starts off with "Christmas in July", a story about jealousy and rivalry among chefs at a hotel. Immediately after finishing the story, I went, "Eh?". However, after spending a minute thinking about it, I realized that "Christmas in July" was a freaking brilliant read. It's one of those understated stories that makes you think, and in a good way. It has a complete arc (beginning, middle, ending), and the protagonist is transformed at the end. Yu, a sous chef at one of the restaurants in the hotel, has always been denied a promotion, and has to watch younger chefs brought in from other countries rise and bask in fame. At the end of the story, Yu, who has quit the job and is now married and has two children, has opened his own business, whereas the star chef he's always been jealous of remains the same, serving the same food.
Brilliant, I tell you.
Then the problem starts. Just like Chua Kok Yee's book "Without Anchovies", the editor must have realized the strength of the opening story and placed it there on purpose. Good strategy, I have to say. However, it would have been better if the story had been followed up by other solid, complete stories.
The rest of the first section are vignettes. Not stories, but single scenes without beginnings or endings. They feel like exercises to describe scenes the writer witnessed at that particular time. The pieces are told in the first person perspective, present tense. Actually all the pieces in this book are told the same way. There are merits, and there are drawbacks, of course. And the merits don't become apparent until the second part.
I felt something was off, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I started reading Travel Tales. Then it hit me. Except for "Christmas in July", the narrator in the pieces is merely a witness, not an active participant. When you write a story in first-person, the reader inadvertedly assumes the identity of the narrator. Being forced to play a passive role in a story isn't a good enough experience. Just like "The Great Gatsby".
Put these two factors together--single-scene vignettes and passive first-person narration--and you get a frustrating read. There isn't any character development, and as a reader I don't feel invested. And it's a shame, because Rumaizah's writing style is smooth and excellent. She doesn't pretend, and she doesn't try too hard to impress. In fact, the entire book feels like having a thirty-something lady sit across from me at a cozy cafe, regaling me with snippets of her interesting life (or interesting observation of life). The author's presence is barely felt, and I can really get lost in the tales.
Especially during the second part. Oh, the second part.
Travel Tales is a travelogue, pure and simple. And this is where Rumaizah shines. The pieces are still vignettes, and the style of writing is the same, with the same first-person present-tense perspective, but this time, the narrator is an active participant, and by extension, so is the reader. I have not been to a lot of these places, and traveling vicariously through these tales is awesome. I especially liked the tales of Turkey.
Now. On to the technicalities of this book.
I mentioned the cover. I seriously feel that Silverfish Books needs a (new) cover artist. FIXI (and its imprint FIXI NOVO) is doing a great job coming up with brilliant covers, and even the Readings from Readings series has a distinct, beautiful cover concept. Whatever is said and done, we still judge a word-only book by its cover, and using ugly covers is selling the author(s) short.
This book also has the same problem as "Without Anchovies". Great opening piece, followed by a disappointing read, made more so because both these authors show an amazing potential through their opening stories.
I didn't detect that many typos, but there was an abuse of the semi-colon. Especially in the first piece. And I would have appreciated less adverbs, and more strong verbs. I'm not against adverbs, but having them back-to-back can be a tad annoying.
I would have gotten rid of the first part of the book (except for the opening story) and concentrated on the travelogues instead. Travel Tales is indeed an engaging read, not indulgent at all, and would have raised the author's name higher.
First-person present-tense perspective is a delicate thing to handle, and doesn't work all the time. I would have appreciated some of the pieces told in the past tense, or even an active-participant third-person perspective. As it is, the narrative voice sounds exactly the same for all the pieces, and I'm quite certain the first part is told by different people/narrators.
I also mentioned that the entire book feels like a thirty-something woman chatting with me across the table. What I wanted, and didn't get, was a sense of weaving all the threads into one tapestry. Even Scheherazade, with her 1001 Nights, had a bigger, more encompassing arc that tied together everything. Or Khaled Hosseini's "And the Mountains Echoed", even.
This book is far from perfect, for the reasons stated above. But I will judge the author based on the first story and the travelogues. Rumaizah is a raw, unpolished gem. I believe that she will go far if she is given the right guidance and exposure.
I give this book a 3.5/5. It's above average, but it's not quite there.
It is, however, definitely worth the purchase and the read.
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