When A Flower Dies
Country: Singapore
Author Name: Josephine Chia
Publisner Name: Ethos Books
Original Language: English
Josephine Chia’s Submission for the Chommanard Book Prize 2025 Country of Origin : Singapore Title of Novel : When A Flower Dies Published in 2015.
Publisher : Ethos Books.
Singapore ………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Book Summary Septuagenarian Pansy Chan is back in modern Singapore after having lived in England for forty years.
Her husband, George and herself had lived in a seaside, Malay village, Kampong Tepi Laut, near Bedok on the East Coast in pre-independent Singapore.
Circumstances forced them to leave their native country for England.
George, a medical doctor, had tried to fight the cause of the coastal villagers in the 1960s.
Their homes were about to be demolished so that land can be reclaimed from the sea to create space for a new international airport.
The villagers were compelled to move into high-rise government housing called HDB (Housing Development) flats.
However, George did not get any support from his colleagues.
The hospital registrar told him not to interfere in political affairs.
Frustrated at his attempt to save the villages, George left his position at the hospital and subsequently moved out of
...the country.
When George was dying, he made his and Pansy’s son, Anthony, promised to take his mother home as she was suffering from a progressive memory loss.
Back in Singapore, Pansy has to cope with a different Singapore to the one she had left.
Her family has to deal with her debilitating condition.
Her interpretation of what had taken place in Singapore many years before became questionable.
This is a novel about remembering and forgetting.
It is about Pansy’s struggle to keep the memory of her loved ones alive as her mind deteriorates.
Of her three grand-daughters, it appears that Goldie is the only one who is interested in her grandmother’s past history and Peranakan heritage.
The novel also opens a window to some aspects of Singapore’s development and history as we see Pansy passes through the colonial era, witnessing the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s ascension, merging with Malaysia then independence, the land reclamation project and subsequently, the mourning of the first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s demise.
It is also a story about love.
350 Words
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