Like I do with all storybooks, I approached Tropical Madness with open arms, ready to love it. Besides, I've read Mr de Faoite's stories in other anthologies, and while I notice a certain lack of sense of place, which I will elaborate in a bit, I like his writing. There's an elegance to his prose.
I'll be honest. A gwailo writing about local characters and Asian immigrants? It spells disaster as much as...say...an author who's never been out of Kerala writing a novel about high-society gwailos living it large in New York. I'm not saying it's impossible, especially with Google and Gossip Girl, but it won't feel organic, in part because the author draws on stereotypes. Somehow, however, de Faoite managed to pull it off. There are annoying tics that I'll talk about later, but once I got that de Faoite's writing is not much about the characters as it is about social observations--his social observations, to be exact--I was cool with the book.
However. Maybe my expectation was too high, but I did not get the same feeling I got from his single short stories when I read this book. Mr de Faoite seemed to have overreached too far, bordering on purple prose. He used too many adjectives and adverbs, and his attempts at literary prose were so clumsy that I had to muck through his writing and lost sight of the story. The only stories where the writing didn't get in the way were the Facebook updates, "Where is Ah Girl" and "Ah Girl is in a Relationship". Granted, both stories employ Manglish with all its horrendous grammatical errors, but this is where the writing doesn't stumble as it attempts to do literary acrobatics.
Speaking of, I mentioned before that de Faoite's stories are not about the characters, but about his social observations. "Sang Kancil" is about a Malay husband from an arranged marriage being forced to hunt for a mouse-deer to satisfy his wife's pregnancy-induced cravings. "Under the Shade of the Tamarind Tree" is about the futile attempt of a Hindu community to save their temple, and at the same time touches on the religious double standards in Malaysia. Oh, by the way, the call for Subuh/Fajr prayer doesn't come at sunrise. That's when the prayer time ends. "Siti Fatimah and the Bomoh's Curse" is how a bomoh's curse creates a "Final Destination" effect. No real story line. Just deaths.
Anything that went wrong in the stories, a bomoh, a Malay witchdoctor, was to be blamed. It didn't matter that the story was about a Chinese family ("My Good-Looking Bad-Luck Husband") or an estate Indian community ("The Rubber Tapper's Mangle"). And all the stories in this anthology, except for one ("Milking Pen") uses Kay El for Kuala Lumpur. Local people and Nepalese immigrants do not use the gwailo enunciation of KL. Kampung Malays use Kay El, estate Indians use Kay El, Sitiawan Chinese use Kay El. For the sake of authenticity, the author should have considered Kolumpo, Kuala Lumpur, or simply KL depending on the setting. Not the gwailo Kay El for everything. Maybe it was a stylistic decision, but it still annoyed me.
Another recurring problem with de Faoite's writing is the lack of sense of place. He mentioned Taman Ayer Jingga a lot, and it's a good way to tie the stories together, but Taman Ayer Jingga remained only a name throughout his stories. There are no descriptions of setting, no stage as a backdrop, that the stories are disembodied works that could have happened anywhere, be it Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, or Guatemala. The author didn't make full use of the senses to tie down his stories to make them more believable.
He also got lazy toward the middle of the book.
When you sign up for a guided jungle-trail tour, your experience depends on the weather, which is out of the guide's control (ie readers' preference), and the trail the guide uses, be them scenic or bland, as well as the guide's skill in making the trip entertaining and/or educational. Both are within the guide's control (ie an author's skill). If the guide is skilled enough, you get lost in the beauty of the trail, and not the guide's presence. Now, imagine the guide stopping in the middle of a trail and announces, "I'm stopping here. Make your own path. Find your own way out." How does that make you feel? "The Uncles", "All I Want to Do is Play Football", "2064", "Night Fishing", "Trapped in Traffic" and "Milking Pen" are incomplete stories, simply vignettes that have no conclusions or endings. 1/3 of the book. That's quite substantial.
There is one saving grace, however. "The Rubber Tapper's Mangle". It's beautifully written without creating a distraction, and the story itself came to life. There's an honesty in the prose. Honesty and beauty. I'm surprised this story wasn't made the opener for the anthology.
Having read other Fixi Novo books, the writing in this single-author anthology is good in comparison. It would have been much better had de Faoite polished his other stories to a shine that's at least half as bright as "The Rubber Tapper's Mangle". For a native English speaker, I would have expected a richer vocabulary instead of resorting to adverbs. And adverbs. And more adverbs. Why not use "slower" instead of "more slowly"? Why not use "grinned" instead of "smiled broadly"?
I give this anthology 3.5/5 stars, rounded down. It's definitely above average, but not even the beauty of "The Rubber Tapper's Mangle" can elevate the book to a higher rating.
