Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...America, self-published manuscripts and their "controversial" results are often overdramatized in advertising; the novel itself, to an American who has ostensibly seen and heard everything, seldom can live up to the adjectives hyping its publication...
...certain degree, this is the problem which confronts the Westernized, tabloid-hardened reader of Catherine Lim's The Bondmaid, a novel which hits American bookstores this month. Lim, a best-selling author in Singapore for years, saw her latest manuscript rejected by every major publishing house at home before publishing it herself. Deemed objectionable and too "adult" by mainstream literary houses, the book promptly hit the top of Singapore's bestseller lists, leading to publication and distribution rights abroad...
...novel--which opens in 1950s Singapore--is a fictional account of the life of Han, a girl sold into slavery at the tender age of five by her impoverished mother. Almost immediately upon her arrival at the House of Wu, Han befriends the young master, also a child, like herself, who kindly tends to her when she throws tantrums at the loss of her mother. Over the years, their friendship blossoms, and when the two become adolescents, Han falls in love with Master Wu. Although their class differences force her to internalize her passion, she vehemently resists the assaults...
Another dualism that Lim consistently manipulates is that which exists between the gods and goddesses of the Singaporean pantheon, and the mortals who supplicate to them. From the very beginning of the novel, the gods are denigrated and demonized by the poor women and bondmaids who have been victimized by their carelessness. Han's mother prays as a last resort before selling her daughter. But finally she is forced to realize that "Sky God has no eyes nor ears" for the helpless village women who "had cried to [him] from time immemorial" for relief from abusive husbands and yearly pregnancies...
...mythical feel of the novel is not without its problems, however. Lim often intersperses Han's dream sequences with the more direct prose of the remainder of the novel, presumably because these visions help to chronicle Han's transition, even within her lifetime, from a mortal to a goddess. This technique also results in a great deal of befuddlement for the reader; the line between a stylistic intent and a confused style becomes unclear. Events may occur rather believably in one chapter, before being contradicted when reality is revealed in the next...