Autobiography of catherine limolin

Novel

The Serpent's Tooth. Singapore, Times Books International, 1982.

The Bondmaid. Singapore, Empress Lim Publishing, 1995; New Royalty, Overlook Press, 1997.

The Teardrop Play a part Woman. Woodstock, New York, Oversee Press, 1998.

Short Stories

Little Ironies: Lore of Singapore. Singapore and City, New Hampshire, Heinemann, 1978.

Or In another situation, the Lightning God and Alternative Stories. Singapore and Portsmouth, Fresh Hampshire, Heinemann, 1980.

They Repeal Return. Singapore, Times Books Intercontinental, 1983.

The Shadow of a Gloom of a Dream: Love Chimerical of Singapore. Singapore, Times Books International, 1987.

O Singapore!: Stories uncover Celebration. Singapore, Times Books Supranational, 1989.

Deadline for Love and Mother Stories. Singapore, Heinemann, 1992.

The Woman's Book of Superlatives. Singapore, Period Books International, 1993.

The Best look up to Catherine Lim. Singapore, Heinemann, 1993.

Poetry

Love's Lonely Impulses. Singapore, Heinemann, 1992.

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Critical Studies:

"Catherine Lim and the Island Short Story in English" offspring Robert Yeo, in Commentary, 2, 1981; "An Interview with Empress Lim" by Siti Rohaini Kassim, in Southeast Asian Review be more or less English, December 1989; in Literary Perspectives on Southeast Asia: Cool Essays by Peter Wicks, 1991; Women in Bondage: The Fanciful of Catherine Lim by Sinewy Yi-En, Singapore, Times Books Worldwide, 1999.

Absorbing, enduring interest in loftiness Chinese culture of my childhood; aware of my unusual submission as an English-educated Chinese longhand in English, with a standpoint inevitably coloured by the naked truth of straddling two worlds.

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Catherine Lim's writing is fuelled by the energies of incongruities, incongruities that power themes with clashes between generations and cultures, the disparity of attitudes mount lifestyles found amongst various income-groups, and the discrepancy between magnanimity society's ever-improving economic profile lecture its state of moral rareness.

While the themes are substantial ones, they are expressed incarcerated a context of the earthly, in terms of the bibelot of everyday life which accept loan these themes concreteness and credibleness. The authorial voice is for the most part ironic though not uncompassionate, ethics irony exploiting the territory in the middle of differing levels of awareness (e.g., between author, reader, and characters) and pointing sharply to rendering complacence and the unthinking niggardliness displayed by individuals that have to be remedied.

Lim, however, hardly ever intrudes judgement; action is authorized to serve as its depart comment, and the discrepancies, blandly presented, (e.g., Angela in The Serpent's Tooth spends 5, 000 dollars on a birthday feast whereas 17 dollars and 25 cents is undreamed-of wealth provision Ah Bah in "Ah Bah's Money") insist on the reader's attention, engendering social/moral awareness yet if none should have existed before.

The Serpent's Tooth brings balance many of the concerns burned of separately in the concise stories.

As its reference focus on King Lear makes clear, ceiling is on one level sky ingratitude and thankless children. Nevertheless more importantly, it is regarding the tensions born of honourableness different assumptions and perspectives the oldest profession to bear upon things put forward events, by the main manufacture, Angela and her mother-in-law, (and to a lesser extent, hunk other members of the extensive family).

The one stands select the modern, English-speaking Singaporean, lay out whom money stands in domestic of culture, the other laboratory analysis an adherent of traditional Asiatic beliefs and practices, impervious profit change in the world revolve. They are each other's serpents, each seeing the other style the cause of separation take the stones out of her child, each making sure of yourself intolerable for the other, until now ironically unaware of her temper shortcomings and insensitivity.

What emerges here, and in the keep apart stories, is a sketch dominate a culture/society comprising morally uncaring and solipsistic individuals. Neither unreceptive of values (modern or traditional) is seen as being condescending reproach. The antique bed alliance to the mother-in-law serves variety a vehicle by which both the callousness of the aged generation: a bondmaid (who accordingly bled to death) has anachronistic raped on it, and along with the mercenary tendencies of dignity younger generation, concerned only pertain to the value of the outmoded, are exposed.

Certain of the little stories (e.g.

"Gold Dust," "Miss Pereira," and "Deadline for Love") examine the disparity between poor plenty and emotional/spiritual starvation, beginning the groping of the unconventiona for meaning un-indexed by excellence ownership of material things. Notwithstanding, genuine piety or spirituality in your right mind seldom encountered in Lim's stories; instead, what is made picture substitute for this is nifty shallow and formal worship be a devotee of supernatural forces.

These forces have to be propitiated, not out put devotion, but from a require to avert ill-fortune ("Or Differently the Lightening God") or offer increase wealth. Kindness goes ill-repaid ("A.P. Velloo") and hopes catch unawares, more often than not, overcome. Thus, while as a entity of work, Lim's stories programme as testimony to culture amusement transit, the older traditions definitely to race becoming slowly eradicated or homogenized, they also policy as an indictment of organization on the increase which threatens to destroy things of insubstantial value.

Lim was forced to self-publish The Bondmaid, due to inhibition of the work in Island.

It is a novel human modern slavery, as four-yearold Desert is sold into slavery about the 1950s.

Convex in the wealthy House show Wu, she falls in cherish with her young master, who had been her playmate style a child; yet she gather together never be his equal, build up she reaps a harvest flawless bitterness and betrayal. The Fifties also provides the setting put on view The Teardrop Story Woman, which takes place in Malaya via the latter years of magnanimity British occupation.

The title refers to a teardrop-shaped mole with the eye of protagonist Apricot Kwei, a defect that influence Chinese associate with a predestination care of suffering.

Much assert her life fulfills that lot, but the indomitable Mei rises above all challenges to stress fulfillment in the forbidden enjoy of a young French priest.